Coming Up Short: A Collection of Fiction & Non-fiction

This is a multifaceted treat: a sparkling collection of T.V. LoCicero’s best short fiction and non-fiction penned over the past five decades-14 stories, memoirs, essays and occasional pieces that are by turns brilliant, hilarious, moving and insightful. Together they offer a wonderful array of unlikely but vividly realized characters: --A colorful black caddie who plays one of the strangest rounds in the history of golf.--The mild, unassuming fellow often dubbed the greatest crime writer of our time.--A Hall of Fame athlete whose decades of triumph ended in sudden death on a Manhattan street.--A comfortable suburban matron who pays a charitable call on the squalid inner-city room of her long-time maid.--The Little League dad whose compulsive flirtation with Lady Luck may cost him his thumbs, fingernails or the soul of his son.--An earnest young reporter who thinks the witty, gorgeous gal he just met is too good to be true...until she claims to adore him, and then he’s got one small problem.--A meddling spinster so perversely intent on helping her eccentric old housemate that nothing good can ever come of it.--The author himself back in the day, divorced, broke, living in a refashioned garage and looking for a job that pays.

T.V. LoCicero has been writing both fiction and non-fiction across five decades. He’s the author of the true crime books Murder in the Synagogue (Prentice-Hall), on the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. His novels include the coming-of-age story Sicilian Quilt, the romance When A Pretty Woman Smiles and the crime thrillers The Car Bomb, Admission of Guilt and Babytrick (The detroit im dyin Trilogy), and The Obsession and The Disappearance (the first two in The Truth Beauty Trilogy). Fourteen of his shorter works are available in the collection called Coming Up Short. These include the stories and essays he has published in various periodicals such as Commentary, Ms. and The University Review, and in the hard-cover collections Best Magazine Articles, The Norton Reader and The Third Coast. About his ＂checkered past＂ LoCicero says: ＂At one time or another I’ve found work as an industrial spy; a producer of concert videos for Rolling Stone’s greatest singer of all time; one of the few male contributors to Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine; a writer of an appellate brief for those convicted in one of Detroit’s most sensational drug trials; the author of a true crime book that garnered a bigger advance than a top ten best-selling American novel; a project coordinator/fundraiser for a humanities council; a small business owner; the writer/producer/director of numerous long-form documentaries; a golf course clerk; a college instructor who taught courses in advanced composition, music and poetry appreciation, introduction to philosophy, remedial English, and American Literature-all in the same term; a ghostwriter; a maker of corporate/industrial videos; a member of a highway surveying crew; a speechwriter for auto executives; a TV producer of live event specials; an editorial writer; the creator of 15-second corporate promos for the PBS series Nature; and a novelist. ＂There is a sense in which that last occupation was the reason for all the others. Almost anyone who’s ever tried to make ends meet as a novelist knows what I’m talking about.＂