Justin was born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1978. His first hero was Michael Jackson. He remembers watching the first video on MTV (“Video Killed The Radio Star”), he remembers watching The Challenger blow up on live TV in his 3rd grade classroom, his first love was Felicia from General Hospital (their wedding song was “After All” by Peter Cetera & Cher), followed closely by Alyssa Milano on Who’s The Boss. The correlation between everything? He spent too much time watching television and retained more useless information than anyone should. And from an early age he fell in love with music.
His love for the written word came after reading the Choose Your Own Adventure and Encyclopedia Brown series of books, as well as The Littlest Leaguer by Syd Hoff. From the beginning he loved baseball. Instead of using his G.I. Joe and He-Man action figures to blow each other up and/or save the world, he created his own baseball league and used the action figures to hit triples and sacrifice bunt. Justin kept stats, and records for the league, and when baseball season was over, football season started. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were two-sport stars before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders were.
The first stories Justin ever wrote were hybrids–picture Choose Your Own Adventure meets Back To The Future I & II meets The Sword and the Sorcerer–and weren’t very developed. The more he wrote the further away he got from an ending; he never cared about the destination as much as the journey. It wasn’t until 11th grade when his interest in writing was re-piqued. For his final assignment in Journalism class he was given a choice between interviewing 5 people and writing a feature article for the student newspaper, or writing a 2000 word short story. He chose the short story only so he wouldn’t have to interview 5 people. Despite having no idea how to write a short story he got a B+ for it and a handwritten note on the back page that said, “You should take creative writing.” He did.
Justin attended and graduated from Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY and Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. At MCC he wrote for the student newspaper but still refused to interview people, instead choosing the local newspaper’s sports section to get any pertinent information he might need to throw together a feature. He also wrote horoscopes, in spite of having no astrological calling. One day while killing time before an Accounting class he saw two students reading over their horoscopes and one of the girls said, “Oh my God, this is so right!” while the other girl said, “Oh my God, mine too!” It was that moment he realized people will believe anything if they really want to.
At Edinboro University Justin took part in numerous writing workshops with acclaimed authors from both the U.S. and Canada. After graduating, while working for an unnamed retail giant, Justin received a call from a former professor. She wanted two writing samples ASAP to pass along to a soon-to-be-visiting Best-Selling author for an upcoming workshop. Justin had a poem he had been working on and not much else. He panicked. A few days after that phone call he had to kill a couple hours in Jamestown, NY while his girlfriend at the time took a defensive driving class to reduce a speeding ticket she’d received months before. Justin found the local community college, which was empty for Spring Break, found an empty classroom, and sat down and wrote a page worth of drivel describing his surroundings. As he was about to head back to his car he noticed a neon sign on a door. The sign said Theft Anonymous. Justin sat down outside the door and listened to the stories people were telling, tales of theft, daring escapes, relationships busted. After Justin returned to Edinboro, he sent off the page of drivel from earlier that day, as well as the poem, and didn’t think much about any of it until he got his paper back. In a handwritten note it said, “Genius description.” The Best-Selling author said that he said something, and that he should try and uncover it. Almost immediately Justin sat down and starting writing. That page of drivel turned into a story of a random classroom meeting of former thieves. Slowly it evolved into a tale of a twenty-something college graduate who worked in retail. Exactly two years later to that day in Jamestown, NY Justin finished Payday, “A tale of love, larceny, and loss.”
In 2005, along with former Edinboro alum Jason Kane, Justin started Oxyfication, as a gathering place for creative people. Over the years Oxyfication has become just that, as well as place to find pop culture reviews. Oxyfication has ever forced Justin to re-assess his aversion to interviews, as he is a contributor of feature articles, as well as reviews, and essays.
Somewhere along the way Justin started work on his follow-up novel. And somewhere after that he started the follow-up of the follow-up. Not much has come of anything in terms of substance, but he continues to plug away.
