“This fiction can become reality. Our reality.” –USA Today
Fifteen years after USA Today lavished this praise on author Joseph Massucci’s debut novel CODE:ALPHA, the threat of bioterrorism is the new reality for millions.
Joe’s 1997 technothriller anticipated ways terrorists might launch a man-made plague and wipe out the entire population of the U.S. eastern seaboard.
Joe decided to update this international bestseller with GORGON. Back is the beautiful and brainy Julie Martinelli, a biochemist whose inadvertent creation – a genetically engineered virus known as Saint Vitus – becomes a terrible weapon of revenge for the Middle East’s most dangerous terrorist.
Recently released in both print and Kindle, GORGON re-imagines ways Arab terrorists might acquire and deploy a genetically engineered virus by relying on America’s addiction to the region’s other export – oil. Like most novelists, Joe began by writing about what he knows: oil tankers.
He drew from his own experience with the ocean-going behemoths. Standing in the engine room of a 70,000 deadweight-ton oil tanker en route to a refinery in Virginia, Joe spent several days interviewing its captain for a magazine article.
The Pittsburgh native learned about the intricacies of ferrying millions of gallons of crude across open and sometimes rough Atlantic waters.
His own voyage as a writer began, improbably, in the steel-town of Pittsburgh, Pa., where he published The Berry Street News at age 10.
After graduating from Duquesne University with a degree in journalism, Joe earned a master’s degree in rhetoric and communications from the University of Pittsburgh.
Editorial assignments from a major oil company soon took him to the Middle East, Europe and South America, where he experienced first-hand many of the conditions endured by characters in GORGON.
Along the way, Joe has written more than 2,500 articles on a variety of technical topics for corporate and trade publications – and authored four other best-selling novels.
Now founder and CEO of Safari Multimedia, LLC in Texas, he builds killer websites for corporations and helps writers edit, design and publish their own stories.
His daughter Jennifer is a singer, DJ, roller derby player and student in Austin. His administrative assistant, a shelter-dog Chihuahua named Clementine, helps him pick new manuscripts. Tanner, a dachsund rescued in the horrific aftermath of Katrina, barks at coyotes, deer and vultures that threaten corporate headquarters.
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