Article: My grandfather owned a newspaper...
My grandfather owned a newspaper in Providence, RI, the Providence Tribune and was one of the founders of the AP. Although he died many years before I was born, you might say newspapering is the family business. My first job was at the Providence Journal. I dropped out of college and went to work as a copy kid. Copy kids are gofers–running errands, getting coffee–all the grunt work. One afternoon, the editor needed someone to cover a small charity event. He was short–staffed, so he sent me.
The editor was not a tactful man. He would read a story, bang it down on his desk, and bark across the room at the reporter who wrote it. When I got back to the paper and wrote my story, I dropped it off on his desk and continued walking–out the door, down the hall, and into the ladies room, where I hid. When I was sure that he had finished reading it–and finished his tirade I ventured back. The next day, he gave me another story, and the next day, another.
Eventually, I returned to college and also spent time traveling. When I came home, the Journal hired me as a feature writer. My assignments ran the gamut from serious to silly. I did everything from investigating special ed needs in Rhode Island to riding the lead elephant in the Ringling Brothers–Barnum & Bailey circus parade. From the Journal, I moved to the Newark (NJ) Star–Ledger as editor of the daily feature pages.
I happened to be vacationing in Italy shortly after terrorists kidnapped and murdered the head of the government there. All through the trip, I kept wondering: How do you top such a vicious and audacious act? That question was the impetus for my first book, a thriller about a plot to kidnap the pope. The title was The Kiss of Judas, and because international espionage is largely a man's field, to sell the novel to a publisher, I had to pretend to be a man–R. A. Scotti. I've been writing ever since.
Books by R.A. Scotti
For Love of Sarah, The Hammer's Eye,
The Devil's Own, Kiss of Judas, and Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 Pub date:
Sept. 3, 2003 (Little, Brown and Co.)
Cradle Song
HURRICANE WEBSITES
For the most complete and up–to–the–minute information on hurricanes, the National Hurricane Center's website is the place to go. I
also found the following sites interesting and helpful:
RailroadExtra.com
The Great Hurricane of 1938
FAVORITE BOOKS
To write Sudden Sea, I went back and re–read two of my favorite authors who wrote about the sea, Joseph Conrad
and Samuel Eliot Morison–Typhoon and Lord Jim by Conrad; The European Discovery of
America: The Northern Voyages by Morison.
When I'm writing, I read more poetry than anything else. Favorite poets are Evans Chigounis, e. e. cummings, W. B. Yeats, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, and Jorge Luis Borges.
FAVORITE CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Winnie the Pooh (of course), all the Frances book, Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, and A Giraffe and a Half by Shel Silverstein. If you're a writer or aspiring writer, I recommend Donald Pinkwater's very funny Blue Moose and Return of Blue Moose.