JOSEPH COVINO JR began his fledgling writing career as a freelance journalist in Pensacola, Florida writing news stories and opinion columns for the Escambia County BEACON and the Pensacola VOICE. He learned hard news reporting in the school of journalism at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where the university's School of Arts and Sciences awarded him the Alexander Wilbourne Weddell Prize for the best essay on "spreading peace among the nations of the world." He would place among the top 12 finalists in the Ira D. and Miriam G. Wallach Awards, an international essay competition sponsored by the then-Institute for World Order, In Recognition of Writing in Support of an Abolitionist Movement Against War.
He wrote the political tracts, ...And War For All: The Pledge of Subjection and ...And Peace For All: The Pledge of Survival, as well as his comprehensive antivivisection argument against the use--and abuse--of laboratory animals in bio-medical and commercial animal experimentation, Laboratory Animal Abuse: Vivisection Exposed!(trade paperback, 534pp, ISBN 0-943283-00-0, $19.99 plus $3.76 shipping), which is available from his small press, Epic Press, PO Box 30108, Walnut Creek, CA 94598.
He's a thoroughly creative, multi-genre novelist who resolutely repudiates pigeonholing--with no pretensions of ever becoming some pompous "author"--who devoutly aspires to stay solely a writer who writes epic, cinematic fiction capable of transporting his readers by sensory- and thought-provoking prose to other exciting, entertaining, enchanting, entrancing but untried and untrodden realities.
His novels include the fabulous romantic-adventure fantasy, Arabian Nights Lost: Celestial Verses I & II, two parts of an intended trilogy, Frankenstein Resurrected, a literally soul-searching adaptation and retelling of Mary Shelley's classic masterpiece and his psychological gothic horror suspense thriller, Edgar Allan Poe's San Francisco: Terror Tales of the City. His scathing satire on political correctness is titled, Berkeley Bashed: Victim's Guide to the Backward, Barbaric, Butt-Ugly Bog. His long-term ambition is to write international political suspense thrillers combining writing with his lifelong interest in international relations.
His varied activities include acting(in film and video), music(he plays trumpet and sings standards), martial arts(Japanese-style shotokan karate)and natural, non-steroidal, classic-physique bodybuilding as pioneered and perfected by the most magnificent world-class bodybuilder of all time, Steve Reeves(filmdom's one and only original Hercules)--to whom his health and fitness tract, Stay Fit(and Hot)for Life is a devoted tribute. He's also a fitness trainer certified by the American Council On Exercise(ACE), International Sports Sciences Association(ISSA), National Academy of Sports Medicine(NASM), National Council on Strength and Fitness(NCSF)and the National Federation of Personal Trainers(NFPT).
He holds several equally disposable, worthless and utterly useless degrees from what he terms institutions of regurgitated lower learning: AA(general); AS(law enforcement); three BAs(criminal justice, economics, international studies); completed graduate course work in secondary education and political science--one exit exam and thesis shy of an MA degree. Pooey!
He passionately and steadfastly adores the magnificent city of San Francisco.
