Author Spotlight: The Call

Derald Hamilton was born in Santa Cruz, California on July 22, 1950 and seven days later adopted by Derald and Naomi Hamilton, two products of rural Iowa. His father was a career soldier who fell in love with Army life during World War II. His mother worked as both a secretary and an accountant, until bad health forced her into early retirement.

Belonging to a military family, he moved around a lot to such bases as Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Lee, Virginia, Fort Dix, New Jersey, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and one overseas tour to Kaiserslautern, Germany. While in Germany he visited such places as Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, and Austria, along with the expanse of Germany.

When health issues took precedence, Derald and his mother settled in a suburb of Sacramento, while his dad continued moving to wherever the Army assigned him. After high school, Derald enrolled in the community college where he took a course in creative writing. His colleagues and fellow students found him too young and naïve to write credibly, and the criticism caused him to put aside his aspirations. After graduating from community college, Derald transferred to U.C. Davis where he majored in American Studies and became active in the campus Christian program.

During the time he was active in that program, he received what he interpreted as a call to the ministry, but upon graduating from U.C. Davis, he found himself without the funding necessary to pursue seminary studies. With no scholastic help available, Derald worked at a few temporary jobs and finally secured a clerical job with the State of California.

After working for about a year-and-a-half, he had saved enough to continue his studies, and enrolled in Phillips Graduate Theological Seminary in pursuit of a Masters of Divinity Degree. While pursuing this degree, he became disillusioned, perceiving the church atmosphere to be a hotbed of politics and competitive showmanship.

A few years later, Derald pursued a Masters Degree in Library Science. He earned the degree, but found library jobs to be quite scarce, so he took an administrative support job, this time with the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority, where he’s been for the past twenty-six years.

Derald continued freelance writing, and at the age of forty, decided he had done enough living to lend credibility to fiction writing. He has since been able to have four of his short stories published, along with non-fiction articles, and, while now closing in on sixty, is about to bring his first novel into print.

Derald still lives in the Bay Area of northern California and enjoys playing his banjo in bluegrass and old time jam sessions.