For The Love Of God by Francis W. Porretto

Francis W. Porretto

  

I was born in 1952. I have no excuse for that, sorry. As a boy I was fascinated by baseball and space travel. However, my career opportunities were limited in both fields, so I took up mathematics and physics, and eventually became an engineer. That's how I've made my living these many moons.

However, being a wordy sort, I was moved to write, as well; no one I knew was willing to listen to me long enough to hear even the shortest of the stories floating through my head. So, at the tender age of 16, I blew my lawn-mowing money on a manual typewriter and, it being 1968, discovered the joys of carbon paper and correction tape. After a couple of years' fruitless struggles to interest the pulps in my narratives, I gave up the idea for a long time.

Fast-forward to 1994. Desperate to deflect the angst of incipient middle age, I returned to writing, but with a computer and word processor. I'd become fascinated with a character idea: a young woman of great beauty, intelligence, and physical potential who's been enslaved by a vicious biker gang, cannot remember her life before her capture, and must commit murder to win her freedom. Her story, and that of her unlikely rescuer, became On Broken Wings, my first novel, which was completed in 1997.

There have been many ups and downs since then. Conventional publishing houses have proved impervious to my tales, but with the rise of electronic publishing and print-on-demand, my books are beginning to find a readership at last.

I enjoy a modest existence on the eastern end of Long Island in a creaky old ranch house overfilled with books, that perpetually threatens to collapse on my head. I have one dog, five cats, and a wife of surpassing patience who claims still to love me after twenty years and against all odds. My chiefest ambitions are to complete Powers Of The Air (a near-future SF novel) and Liberty's Torch (sequel to Which Art In Hope) before dementia overtakes me, and never again to set foot on an airliner.