I have written for as long as I can remember. Writing is an interest realized from a love of reading everything I could get my hands on. I wrote well in high school, much better in college, and the writing continued to improve by learning from mistakes identified and corrected by teachers and professors. My father was a good writer whose style was shaped and influenced by his undergraduate years at the University of Alabama, his post-graduate years at St. John’s Law School and by serving his country in the US Army Air Force during WWII. My father was my first editor.
My writing improved while attending St. John’s University, and further improved with post-graduate studies at NYU and at Xerox Corp. My formal education and writing abilities accompanied me when in 1970, I joined my family’s fine paper business. There, I contributed capably to the firm’s marketing department, to corporate correspondence and to ad copy for promotional material.
Writing speeches, essays, biographies, short stories, press releases, articles and white papers all served to hone my skills, broaden my lexicon and to develop style. I employed all of my writing capabilities when, in 2009, I was invited to write The Luckiest Kid in New York, the memoir of a young man who was the batboy for the New York Yankees for several years in the early 1960s. Interviewing the story’s hero, writing of his great experiences, working, initially, with a Developmental Editor, trying to engage a literary agent, peddling the manuscript to dozens of publishers; these experiences were in themselves, a Master’s Program in writing. In the end we self-published the book and enjoyed success in sales and distribution.
UPDATE 2022: And another thing. Occasionally, life interrupts you when you’re doing something else, so while I was busy writing my debut novel of literary fiction, we decided to move. Packing up the house, listing it, waiting for a buyer, searching for a new house, moving in and unpacking; this was a two-year interruption. I have just completed my 88,000-word novel The Family Wolf and have begun the process of publishing it. Or trying to, anyway. The story of a young man leaving his home and family in southern Italy, is set in the period of 1892 through 1978. The work is pure fiction and cites real locations in Italy, France, Russia, Poland, Greece and the United States. In addition to my own editing of the work, Benjamin Dreyer’s Dryer’s English and Steven King’s On Writing were my reference books. This website and an updated, upgraded social media presence will help to support my attempt at getting published. Publishing is to writing, as catching is to fishing.
UPDATE MID-2022: As noted above, the process of trying to have my work published began in earnest in late March of 2022. Now titled as The Family Wolf, my first effort was to reach out directly to a publisher with whom I had worked when writing The Luckiest Kid in New York. “You don’t have a platform, John. We don’t have the time [or interest] to develop something from left field.” was the brutally honest response I received. No shock, so I tried something different. I reached out to sixty-two literary agents whose websites invited new authors to submit examples of their work. I actually received ten replies, each one offering something complimentary about the writing, but unfortunately, not what they were looking for.
UPDATE MID-2023: Hating to simply abandon my work, I have explored the possibility of self-publishing. Early days, and once all the particulars are presented, I’ll determine what happens next.
The services offered here are supported by a lifetime of real-life, real-world experience, informed by my Brooklyn, New York childhood, a formal education, almost 50 years in business environs, honed by teachers and professors, contributed to by several published authors and influenced by Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, P.G. Wodehouse, Ernest Hemingway, Louis Lamour, John Le Carre, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Pete Hamill, Peter Robinson, Charles Todd, Dennis Lehane, J.K. Rowling, Amor Towles, Ken Bruen, Fredrik Backman, Erik Larson, John Connolly and Michael Connelly, Jeffrey Archer, Jack Carr, John Grisham, Anthony Horowitz, J.K. Rowling, to name a few.
To paraphrase the physician’s creed, First, write nothing poor or harmful. Read, learn, then read some more. A lot more.