Bio...

  A little about me for starters. I am 65 years old, married and retired. I started reading and writing when I turned 60 and I have self published three novels and a book of poems. I like to play chess and MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), like World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls Online, etc.

    I am an avid reader and am particularly interested in historical mysteries and adventures. Some of my favorite authors include Ken Follett, Bernard Cornwell, C.J. Sansom, Steve Berry, Ellis Peters and George MacDonald Fraser.

About my first book.....

     This is the story of my first book and my experience as an author.  When I was young I loved to read. Stories took me to places I had no chance of experiencing on my own. I was captivated by every book. By the age of 13 I had read such diverse books as: Black like me, Candy, The Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, the Carpetbaggers, The Great Imposter, Never trust a Naked Bus Driver and so on. Then I joined the army at 17 and went off to war. I did not start reading again until I was 60 years old. My barber recommended Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett one day since I told him of my interest in medieval times. The book was 1,200 pages long and I thought I would probably never finish it. I read 20 pages a day at first. As I became more and more interested in the story, I started reading 40 then 60 pages a day. Before I knew it I had read the book and loved it.

     I was working out at the YMCA and was casually talking to the man next to me. I was so excited about the book I had just read I wanted to share the experience. I asked him if he read much. I did not know this man was an English professor at a local college, and an accomplished writer.  He could see I was exuberant about my book which he had also read and liked. He recommended a few books I might also like and I found them at a used bookstore in town. I read book after book. I found some I liked that he had not read and shared them with him. He brought me some from his shelf at home to share with me and I was reading constantly.

     Although we only talked about 15 minutes a day, twice a week while exercising, my love for reading had been rekindled. In my youth I loved to write poetry. I only had a few poems locked away that I penned back then. I started writing poems again and sharing them on an internet web site for writers called Booksie. It was such fun reading other poems and writing my own that I wrote over 60 poems in two years. I read novels that friends of mine had started and most only got a few chapters and stopped. I have always had many ideas that I wanted to try put into a book. I started one and could not stop. It is my first novel, A Butcher's Tale.

Joe P. Attanasio  (11/25/2012)

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Some other site you can find me on:

Booksie – A popular writers website.
http://www.Booksie.com/Attanasio

My author’s page at amazon is:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00954GOP2

My Goodreads author page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6523871.Joe_P_Attanasio

A website sharing the works and links for a group of independent and traditionaly published authors called The Booktrap:

http://thebooktrap.weebly.com/

I have a public facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/joe.attanasio.391



An International Literary Publication called Reflection where I and a team of writers from around the world contribute monthly.

http://issuu.com/wandrmag/docs/reflection_final_58_mergeddocument1

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I look forward to serving up some interesting posts on the menu here at Joe's.