I was a sportswriter for a Metropolitan NY newspaper in the late '60s, then a freelance advertising copywriter.  In 1987, while trying to make a living at three jobs at once: driving a limousine, selling real estate, and painting houses, I read a great book by Larry McMurtry, called "All My Friends are Going to be Strangers."   I was struck by a section of the book where the main character determined to write at least "one paragraph a day."  It got me motivated, and I've been writing ever since.   

      It is said that we write best what we know, so I began a memoir-style book, based upon my experiences in adolescence, and up through college.  The more I wrote about reality, the more each scene would morph into a fictitious experience, so I decided to go with it, and the result was my first novel Escaping Innocence (A Story of Awakening).  

     Later, when recuperating from shoulder surgery, I decided to write a murder mystery.  So, with the words "It was a dark and stormy night" rattling around in my head, I sat down at my computer and started to write.  Four years later I had a book, my first mystery thriller, As the Twig is Bent.  Since then, I have written a second and third in the Matt Davis Mystery Series, called Opening Day and Twice Bitten, which was published early in 2012. Recently, As The Twig Is Bent was translated into Portuguese by Rafa Lombardino of Word Awareness, and Opening Day was awarded an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion.

In March of 2010, I published my fourth book, A "Real" Man's Guide to Divorce (First, you bend over and...).  All of my books are published by CreateSpace (a division of Amazon.com), and and are available in regular and large print.  They are also available as Kindle books on Amazon.com. and in eBook format at Smashwords.com

For a look at my books, please visit my author website at:  www.joeperronejr.com

     I've always believed that you write best about what you know.  Since I knew my own life "pretty well," I decided to do a memoir-style book, and found that my mis-adventures kept morphing into new, fictitious ones, so I went with it, and created my first novel: "Escaping Innocence."  

     Later on, while recuperating from shoulder surgery, I decided I wanted to write a mystery thriller.  So, I sat down at my computer, and with the words "It was a dark and stormy night," I began to write.  The result was my second novel, "As the Twig is Bent."  Here again, I drew upon my own experiences with Internet chat rooms as a basis for the plot.  (You'll have to read both to decide how well I did).

To preview (and hopefully buy) my books, just go to my storefront at:http://stores.lulu.com/catsklgd1