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Steve Piacente

Goodreads Author

Born

in Brooklyn, NY, The United States

Website

http://www.stevepiacente.com

Twitter

#wordsprof

Genre

Literature & Fiction

Influences

My mom was the embodiment of women's lib before anyone knew the term, ...more

Member Since

May 2009

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Bella is the winner of a National Indie Excellence 2012 Book Award, and the Readers' Favorite 2012 Gold Medal for Dramatic Fiction. Bootlicker, the prequel to Bella, was published in September 2012 and is winner of the 2013 Readers' Favorite Silver Medal for Southern Fiction. Pretender (2018) explores the raw instincts that form our choices and drive our actions, sometimes with consequences that span generations.

But it all started for me in 1954.

Eisenhower was president, no one beat the Yankees, and Elvis was still an unknown. TV was three channels and two colors, black and white. Growing up, I didn’t particularly like school. I liked baseball, egg rolls and comic books, and it was Superman that got me interested in reading and writing.

Rai Bella is the winner of a National Indie Excellence 2012 Book Award, and the Readers' Favorite 2012 Gold Medal for Dramatic Fiction. Bootlicker, the prequel to Bella, was published in September 2012 and is winner of the 2013 Readers' Favorite Silver Medal for Southern Fiction. Pretender (2018) explores the raw instincts that form our choices and drive our actions, sometimes with consequences that span generations.

But it all started for me in 1954.

Eisenhower was president, no one beat the Yankees, and Elvis was still an unknown. TV was three channels and two colors, black and white. Growing up, I didn’t particularly like school. I liked baseball, egg rolls and comic books, and it was Superman that got me interested in reading and writing.

Raised in New York and educated in Washington, I kept moving south after college, eventually learning all they left out at journalism school at the feet of street-smart newspaper editors in Florida and South Carolina.

In 1985, one of those editors found me presentable enough to send back to D.C., this time as correspondent for the Tampa Tribune. The job ended four years later, and I found myself in steep competition for a similar slot with the Charleston, S.C. paper. I remember pumping the Charleston editor’s hand and pleading, “Please don’t let me become a press secretary.”

The man was merciful, enabling nine more years of Washington reporting, and front row exposure to the real South, as Charleston is far deeper into Dixie than Tampa, geography be damned. As time wore on, my NY sensibilities blended with Southern convention to produce stories on intriguing topics such as public celebration of the Confederate flag, and segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond.

It was a great time until Charleston ran out of cash and shuttered its one-man D.C. bureau. Out in the cold, I - by this time a father of three ravenous, athletic, college-bound children - found warmth in a little known Federal agency called the U.S. General Services Administration. I began as a speechwriter and today head the agency’s web, new media, and graphics teams.

Though Bella is my first real fiction, some thin-skinned politicians would say the stories I wrote about them were just as fabricated. In fact, no fiction bubbled up until I earned my license to write in the Johns Hopkins Masters program in 2000. During this time, I also reentered the classroom at American University, my alma mater, and began teaching journalism classes.

My insistence on clean, tight writing did no lasting harm to the three afore-mentioned children, now taxpaying adults in the fields of public relations, web design, and engineering. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the kids snuck secret help from their mom, Felicia Piacente, a special education administrator in the Montgomery County (Md.) Public School System.

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Combine Editions
Steve Piacente’s books

Average rating: 3.93 · 180 ratings · 72 reviews · 7 distinct works

	Bella 3.80 avg rating — 130 ratings — published 2010 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bootlicker 4.26 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 2012 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pretender 4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Almanac of the Unelected Staff of the U.S. Congress 1998 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Almanac of the Unelected: Staff of the U.S. Congress, 1991 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1991	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Your New Fighting Stance: Good Enough Isn't... And You Know It. by Steve Piacente (Goodreads Author), Jon Haeffner (Illustrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bella [Paperback] [2010] (Author) Steve Piacente by Steve Piacente (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Steve Piacente's Blog

The Power of Saying Less

Photo by Steve Piacente

A Virginia family farmer is standing beside rows of luscious apple trees talking to a D.C. communications consultant. The farmer speaks passionately about his operation. After a few minutes he catches himself. Apologizes. “I know I go on… People don’t want to hear it.” He pauses. Looks around. Takes it all in with a gaze that sweeps over acres and acres of fruit trees. Cattl

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Steve Piacente wrote a new blog post The Power of Saying Less Photo by Steve PiacenteA Virginia family farmer is standing beside rows of luscious apple trees talking to a D.C. communications consultant. The farme Read more of this blog post »
Aug 20, 2025 12:29AM · like
Steve Piacente and 9 other people liked Skip's review of My Friends: "My Friends is a woven and intricate story about friendship, art, and giving. (It made me think of a beautiful tapestry.) Louisa is a 17+ year old runaway from a foster home, who has lost her closest friend Fish, and is adrift. She breaks into a museu" Read more of this review »
Jun 13, 2025 02:16PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of My Friends by Fredrik Backman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — My Friends by Fredrik Backman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Steve Piacente rated a book it was amazing My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
One day, a novel finds its way to the father of an art therapist. She is the mother of a nine-year-old girl who reads like someone twice her age and writes as if her thoughts arrived fully grown. When the girl is seven, she announces, “I don’t like t ...more
Jun 13, 2025 12:59PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of My Friends by Fredrik Backman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — My Friends by Fredrik Backman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Quotes by Steve Piacente (?)

“Good enough isn't, and you know it.”
― Steve Piacente

tags: life-and-living, life-lessons, life-quotes, perseverance

1 likes

“No one outruns the past.”
― Steve Piacente, Pretender

tags: life-lessons, life-philosophy

0 likes

“Some choices we make, others, we have no say. Or do we?”
― Steve Piacente, Bootlicker

tags: justice, politics, pride, race-and-racism-in-america, self-respect, southern-fiction

0 likes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Crazy Challenge C...: Canadian Fact and Fiction Challenge	76	75	May 06, 2013 10:52AM
Bookworm Bitches : Books Read in April	25	144	Jun 12, 2013 06:38AM
Crazy Challenge C...: A-Z Pet Name Challenge 2012	183	206	Jun 19, 2013 01:22PM

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Steve’s Quotes

“Good enough isn't, and you know it.”
― Steve Piacente

tags: life-and-living, life-lessons, life-quotes, perseverance

1 likes

“No one outruns the past.”
― Steve Piacente, Pretender

tags: life-lessons, life-philosophy

0 likes

“Must an act be illegal to be a crime? Who decides if the offender is worthy of forgiveness?”
― Steve Piacente, Pretender

tags: guilt, life-and-living, life-lessons, life-philosophy, redemption

0 likes

“They say life passes in an instant. Not true. What is true is that we rarely stop to examine life moment by moment, unless moments occur that stop it for us.”
― Steve Piacente, Bella

tags: death-and-dying, life-and-living, life-philosophy, love, marriage

0 likes

“Some choices we make, others, we have no say. Or do we?”
― Steve Piacente, Bootlicker

tags: justice, politics, pride, race-and-racism-in-america, self-respect, southern-fiction

0 likes

More of Steve’s quotes…