Professor Bozzone publishes 'Off Somewhere'
After nearly three decades of playwriting, WCSU’s maverick Creative Writing professor William Bozzone released his first book “Off Somewhere”, a collection of short stories published by Whitepoint Press on Nov. 17 to positive reviews. Why is he a maverick? Bozzone wrote the stories under the penname Z. Z. Boone, because it’s not about him.
“I wanted the book to be about the writing, not about me. It’s easy to let ego run wild—I did it as a dramatist—and this time I felt the need for Bill Bozzone to be as invisible as possible,” said Bozzone.
It was time for a change of pace.
“I’d spent close to thirty years writing for the theatre, and it started feeling a bit stale. I wasn’t really enjoying the collaboration as much as I once had.”
Looking to do something new, Bozzone went to his old passion of writing fiction.
“I’d written fiction in college and graduate school, and one day I just realized how much I missed it. I didn’t know if I’d get anything published, but I knew I wanted to try. One story led to the next, and after a lot of rejection, I finally had a collection.”
He spent several years putting together the collection, and even more time after that shopping it around to publishers. His journey putting together the collection was a gradual one.
“I try to write 500 words of semi-polished prose a day. Sometimes I get more, sometimes less. The bad days are the ones when I get nothing, due to laziness.”
He is already working on a second collection, but hopes it won’t take quite as long to release the finished product.
“Write the kind of things you enjoy reading,” Bozzone said, giving advice to those who want to get published.
Click here to buy the book from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
