Paint The Beast Pretty is the story of an intelligent, talented, rational man who, when he finds his life a shambles and himself in final extremis, abandons the reasoned, hard reality of his life and paints it over with a prettier, softer reality, a chimeric, mystical, magical reality, a more feminine reality. Only after the end of his life do we fully grasp the extent of the reality he was driven to evade in order to justify himself. But it is not his search for a prettier reality that precipitates the events that unfold this story, it is his jealousy and paranoia and an envelope he receives in the mail, an envelope whose contents may impel him to a feeling of overpowering anger and to macho acts of explosive anger, of vicious, bloody retribution, acts necessary to the salvation of his honor, of his manhood.
About the Author: I was born in the lower east side of Manhattan, New York, and except for a four year stint in the US Air Force, I have lived in the New York City area all the years of my life. For a brief period before joining the Air Force I wrote and illustrated comic books. After the Air Force I went into advertising, doing copywriting, graphic design, photography and illustration, and heading creative departments as art director and creative director. I started various advertising agencies, design studios and a photography studio over my fifty-plus years in the business, garnering a good share of major creative awards in the process. I retired from advertising in 2012. I wrote the original Paint The Beast Pretty, some thirty years ago, but, I made no attempt to get it published at that time because friends who read the manuscript thought it was auto-biographical, which it wasn't --anymore than any fictional work normally is. This is a re-write of that original manuscript, with parts that are too close to home eliminated. On the way to re-writing Paint The Beast Pretty, I wrote and self-published a non-fiction book with the long title of The One Truth That Governs Man, The Gods, The Heavens, And The Universe. While the title mentions the gods, religion is not a central part of this book which is basically an introduction to a new, absolute approach to the subject of causal determinism and free will. On a personal note: my wife and I have been married since 1958. We have three sons and three daughter-in-laws who, doctors and lawyers all, are the parents of our eleven grandchildren. Besides writing, I paint and play tennis and swim and walk and run --and I used to love to play chess till my grandchildren started beating me on a rather regular basis.