Sal Casamassima is an attorney whose only prior writing experience was drafting legal briefs and contracts. He decided to take early retirement from his corporate job and wandered through various pursuits such as coaching his daughter’s softball teams and amateur winemaking. During his wanderings in retirement wonderland, Sal constantly annoyed his daughter by expressing his latent desire to write a mystery novel. In a vain attempt to stop his endless banter, she told hm to put up or shut up by taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge to complete a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. Of course, Sal failed to complete the required word count, which he blamed on Thanksgiving and other distractions, but alas he was infected by the writing bug and trudged forward to complete his first novel.
In his novel writing journey, Sal decided to go against the grain prevalent in current pop culture. The story and characters in his books are set in contemporary society and actual cities where the crime to be solved is grounded in reality and influenced by the societal challenges we all confront in today’s world. His main characters may have their own quirks and personality flaws but they are portrayed as real people that most of can relate to. In other words, they are like the rest of us.
Sal begins writing his books without a final script or outline in mind. He has no clue how the mystery will be solved and leaves it to his protagonists to solve the case for him in real time. He is their stenographer and simply types what they are speaking or thinking. Hence, his use of the present tense. He asks the reader to take the same approach. His story and character arcs force you to look in the mirror and ask yourself how you would confront the roadblocks standing in the way to solving the mystery. He invites the reader to join the cast and become one of the protagonists – or, possibly, one of the antagonists, if tempted to do so.
Sal lives in beautiful San Diego, the primary locale for his first novel. Being somewhat of a weather wuss he enjoys the forever mild temperatures in a city that some describe as a climatological cul-de-sac. Sal takes advantage of this balmy weather and goes for aimless walks with his Minpin dog (who is portrayed in his books.) He also cooks Italian food that adversely affects his waistline and continues to find new ways to annoy his daughter and ever patient wife. In other words, he’s like the rest of us.
Sal Casamassima 