MY WRITING
I spent a career in accounting and IT, but my first love was always writing. My very first story was “Harry the Singing Hippo” in the second grade. My teacher gave all of us a creative writing assignment and that’s what I came up with. The thing is, the teacher liked it so much she posted it on the board for the class to read. While on the surface it was a silly kid’s story, it had themes on being yourself and accepting who you are, which was pretty advanced for a second grader.
My next foray into writing was with my high school newspaper, with riveting coverage on topics like student gambling highlighted by the popular Iran/Iraq War pool. After that, my writing career tailed off, with occasional indulgences in writing mock Penthouse letters. My short stories in a college creative writing class were popular with my classmates and caught the attention of my professor, who thought I could become a very good writer. Some of the spooky paranormal themes in my stories were a prelude to what was to come in my two “Tales” books.
Flashing forward to 2010, I got into Dungeons and Dragons online and was soon writing characters and backstories, little realizing that I was training myself how to write. Then in 2019, I suddenly got the inspiration to write my first book, a memoir of my experiences growing up in an unusual family in a unique area – the San Francisco Peninsula – in the 1960s and 1970s. I followed that with my first work of fiction, Tales from the Peninsula, in 2021. A sequel followed the next year. As for what’s next, I will know when the inspiration hits me!
ABOUT ME
I live in Belmont with my wife and daughter and our Shih Tzu named Whimsy. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Serra High School in San Mateo (where an all-time MLB home run champ and a multiple Super Bowl MVP also coincidentally attended). I have worked in various positions in IT for the past 30+ years, 26 of those with Wells Fargo in San Francisco.
I enjoy cooking, binge-watching shows, video games, target shooting, science fiction, classic rock, my favorite podcasts on history and the supernatural, and travel. I am a lifelong Bay Area sports fan of the Giants, Warriors, and Forty Niners. My bucket list includes visiting every continent, taking a skydive, doing some ghost hunting, and driving through the lower 48 states and Alaska.
Dennis Venturoni Author 