Joseph Benedetto: a biography

Born in an army field hospital in Germany and educated by nuns in Rome, I came to America at an early age. I attended school both in California and West Virginia, and graduated from Wheeling Central Catholic High School alongside the actor and country music singer John Corbett. John went on to Cerritos College and I attended West Virginia University, and earned a degree in Computer Systems Engineering.

Having worked as a short-order cook, a cub reporter, a computer systems engineer and a security operative of the Pinkteron Agency (Shield #75992), I took up writing fiction professionally on New Year's Day 1982. My first paid piece appeared in Dragon magazine in 1984 and I've been publishing stories ever since. Writing in several genres, I'm at my best when I'm sitting at the keyboard plotting theft, rape and murder--the perrenial favorites of the scum who inhabit those mean streets down which a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

As a foreign-born crime author, I always try to bring a touch of the unusual to my writing, be it an international incident in a midtown precinct house or murder on a space station in Low Earth Orbit. In my stories, justice may be sought after by a divorced female cop or a Marine-turned-private eye or perhaps by a book-selling amateur sleuth, but in the end it will be found.

This being the 21st century, I have a laptop computer and a cell phone, but still occasionally use my old manual typewriter for crafting for stories, usually when I need to work through some extra-tough writing. In fact my story "Fast Fingers and Coffee", in which the crime is solved by clues provided by a typewriter, was crafted on one.

I live for that kind of irony, actually.