Joseph Wallace

Joe Wallace's career as a writer has now spanned about three decades, but it’s still as unpredictable and hard to classify as it was when he was a struggling young freelancer back in the 1980s. Unpredictable how? Well, he started out writing for magazines and newspapers on health, medicine, and the environment; segued into articles and books about dinosaurs; took a sharp turn to baseball history; plunged into noir short stories; and then finally achieved my lifelong dream of being a published novelist. He is now the author of three novels: DIAMOND RUBY (2010, Touchstone), set in 1920s New York City; the global apocalyptic thriller INVASIVE SPECIES (2013, Penguin/Berkley); and its follow-up, SLAVEMAKERS (2015, Penguin/Ace). His short fiction includes stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (most recently “Jaguar,” in the Sept/Oct 2014 issue) and anthologies including Bronx Noir, Baltimore Noir, Hard-Boiled Brooklyn, and two Mystery Writers of America collections: The Prosecution Rests and Ice Cold. My story “Custom Sets,” first published in The Prosecution Rests, was also selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2010. He lives with his family north of New York City, where he also runs storytelling/creative-writing workshops in the local elementary school, organize writing contests in the middle and high school, and work as a mentor for young writers in his community. If he can have an unpredictable yet deeply fulfilling writing career, so can they.