Edward R. Ricciuti

This web site is my “platform,” a term that publishers use nowadays for a promotional vehicle which provides an author with public exposure and supposedly spurs book sales. That said, I should introduce myself and describe my work. That is not as easy as it might seem because, as the Middletown Press, a Connecticut daily, noted, “Ed Ricciuti’s resume has to be updated about as often as the tote board at Belmont Park.”

For starters, then, I’ll let someone else do the job. The Hartford Courant described me this way: “He has been nose to nose with a Cape buffalo. He has roamed the back alleys of Bangkok and Singapore, interviewed Masai warriors and Iranian herdsmen and tracked smuggling operations in Southeast Asia. [He]... has come a long way since his first free-lance assignment of interviewing druggists for two cents a word. Since then, he has chased information from the heights of the Andes Mountains to the depths of the Red Sea.”

Another newspaper called me “a living, breathing beer commercial.” The analogy, I hasten to add, referred not to my consumption of suds but to travels “in some of the globe’s most exotic and far-away places.” The article glossed over long hours at home trying to come up with words that sell. Enough of them to produce more than 80 books for adults and young people and a four-drawer file’s worth of articles for publications such as Audubon, Field & Stream, Outside, Wildlife Conservation, Science Digest, USA Today and Fly Rod & Reel. I now write regularly for World Book Publishing.

Perhaps the description of me that I treasure most appeared in a magazine read largely by fly fishing purists, recounting how I wielded a rod in a famed Croatian trout river. It alleged that I “looked and sounded like a crazed Buddhist monk in a grade-B karate movie.” Insulting? Not to someone who has been known to put a hooked worm at the end of a fly leader. Actually, I've studied karate and now train in combat hapkido, a no-nonsence martial art, and Jun Fan jeet kune do gung fu at Green Hill Combat Hapkido, Killingworth, Ct. I earned by first-degree black belt and instructor's certificate in combat hapkido in 2009, at age 70, and am working towards my second degree.

Be that as it may, over the years, I’ve worn a fair number of hats. Newspaper crime reporter. Magazine editor. Curator at the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society). Public relations advisor. Zoo and aquarium exhibits developer. The Animal Man on Patchwork Family, WCBS-TV. Ambulance driver. Firearms safety instructor.
I’ve held two collge boxing championships and worked corners for professionals, dabbled in no-holds-barred fighting tournaments, worked with the World Wrestling Federation promoting the grunt-and-groan business, and taught writing to at-risk kids and to graduate students. I am also a certified master gardener and have a stand selling home-grown produce.

The University of Notre Dame provided me with a bachelor’s degree in communication arts and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism appointed me a Sloan-Rockefeller Advanced Science Writing Fellow. I’m a former U.S. Marine, who sometimes admits to also serving a year in the Army Reserve.

I have a zillion hobbies. Shooting, hunting and fishing. Birding. Gardening, even small-scale farming. Raising gamebirds. Keeping tropical fish and sundry other creatures, including a very large dog, two fire-bellied toads, a hamster and an axolotl, which is a plug-ugly neotenic salamander from Mexico.

Since 1972, I’ve been what some bank loan officers suspiciously view as a cover for a writer without a real job--a full-time freelance. My core subject areas have been nature, science, conservation and wildlife crime. However, almost anything in my experience can be turned into writing. I like to blend my different areas of experience into one piece of writing. Example: combining medical and outdoor writing to do a piece on Lyme disease for a sportsmen’s magazine. Or, as in my most recent book, using both science and crime writing skills to explore the world of forensics. Unlikely combinations can lead to fresh angles. There’s nothing novel about writing on environmental politics. But reporting on environmental politics from a war zone is another story.

My books reflect the scope of my interests. A few examples: The Natural History of North America, Rocks and Minerals, The Yakama, How to Box, The War in Yugoslavia, The Snake Almanac, Amphibians, Killer Animals, Killers of the Seas, and Science 101: Forensics.

Among my most memorable experiences is standing on Andre the Giant's chest and flexing my arms while he was flat on the floor easing his back pain. He let me do it for a goof otherwise I wouldn't be here to write this. What about rubbing noses with a Cape buffalo? Gospel truth, it happened. In the dark of an African night, I peered under the rain flap of my tent to determine the source of a disturbance there. My nose came into moist contact with a massive black muzzle, behind which were a daunting set of horns and two eyes, as surprised as mine. What happened? Maybe I’ll write about it.

Agent:
New England Publishing Associates (books for adults)

Memberships:
Authors Guild
Overseas Press Club of America
National Association of Science Writers
Outdoor Writers Association of America
Federal Wildlife Officers Association (associate)
International Combat Hapkido Federation

Books:
Science 101: Forensics
Edward R. Ricciuti incorporates his experience as a police reporter into his science and nature writing, reporting on criminal activities ranging from homicides to the illicit wildlife trade.

Killer Animals
Behind the happy picture of animals as pets and friends of humankind, there lies a fearsome and often hidden reality of animals as killers. It is this darker side of our contact with animals that Edward R. Ricciuti explores in Killer Animals.

Killers of the Seas
Killers of the Seas is a rousing, scientifically sound survey of all the sea creatures that instill dread in the hearts of humans. Edward Ricciuti, a science writer with a passion for scuba diving and oceanographic expeditions, has swum eye-to-eye with a killer whale, tagged and captured sharks and had numerous tense exchanges with barracuda, moray eels and stingrays.