Guest Post: Branded, Independent Thought, and more with Professor John A. Tures

 

Please welcome Professor John A. Tures to the blog today….

 

My name is John A. Tures and my book is Branded, published by Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded), and it’s a story about a product placement scandal and the attempt by researchers to uncover what really happened.

Remember the O.J. Simpson slow-speed chase?

Even if you were pretty young, you’ve probably seen it on a Netflix documentary.

Here’s a trivia question: What was the vehicle?

Spoiler Alert Here: White Ford Bronco

Most people recognize the make and model, even the color when I ask them.

Now who was with O.J. Simpson in the car?

Probably need to Google it. I’ve had one person at a book event know the answer.

You may not know this, but Ford was strongly considering phasing out the Bronco, but after the incident, they all sold out. The company kept it around for at least a decade. And now they’re back, thanks to all of those O. J. Simpson documentaries.

Here’s a second trivia question: There was a notorious unsolved case of a serial killer, who was inserting cyanide into capsules for a painkiller throughout Chicago in the early 1980s.

What was the painkiller?

Spoiler Alert Here: Tylenol

Did you also know that their parent company, Johnson & Johnson had to spend billions on recalling all of the capsules, replacing them with caplets?

Here’s the “what if:” What if the O.J. Simpson slow speed chase was manufactured to sell White Ford Broncos? What if a rival painkiller paid to put a hit on Tylenol in a bid for market share?

In my story Branded, a marketing professor and his students unwittingly uncover part of the scheme while entering a marketing competition involving research and presentations. The cases are fictitious, as are the characters, but they’ll feel real.

It rarely takes one person to pull off this kind of research. The protagonist will get help from his wife (a tenured professor at their college), the students, fellow faculty and others at the college, and even their kids. It’s a little different from some thrillers where the main character is super wealthy or has access to untapped resources. It’s a David-and-Goliath story, but one where you’ll find yourself at the end saying “Yeah, I can see that happening.”

My second book Independent Thought comes out later this summer, also published by Huntsville Independent Press. When people find out that I am a political science professor, they don’t ask if I am a Democrat or Republican, or if I’m a conservative or liberal. They ask me “Why don’t we have a third party in America?”

In Independent Thought, several characters from Branded are recruited to help with a new third party. Led by a political maverick, the organizers of the new party find out just how hard it is to start a third party, and all of the barriers they face.

Just as the new party gets its footing, and starts to challenge the political establishment, strange things and accidents seem to happen to the members of the campaign. What could be behind these incidents? And the aftermath of the election may be more exciting than the voting itself!

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4evuAxY

 

 

John A. Tures ©2026

The author, John A. Tures, started writing at age 15 for the El Paso Herald-Post, then continued in college for the school’s newspaper. After earning his doctorate, he became a weekly columnist for a number of newspapers and magazines. In 2020, he started working on Branded, which came out late last year. A third book, Moral Hazard, in the editing stage covers an international crisis and its impact on U.S. politics. https://www.johntures.com/