Chris Genoa

Chris Genoa was born on the 5th of March, the same date, many years before, that the stapler was patented by the Englishman Charles Henry Gould. Because of this, every time Chris uses a stapler on March 5th he'll first pick it up and tenderly whisper to it, "Happy birthday, you son-of-a-b***h."

Chris was raised near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a middle class, Italian-American home. Yes, they ate a lot of pasta, and no, they didn't say things like "Whatsamadda you" and "Shuddupa you face."

The son of a civil engineer and a teacher, he was sent off one afternoon at the age of 8 to play the laser tag game of Photon at the Jersey Shore. Neon lights pulsed, pounding synthesizer music enveloped the room, a female voice kept saying, �Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" And a husky Chris Genoa ran blindly around the dark, foggy room in terror for 15 minutes before he put his phaser in his mouth and committed Photon suicide. At that moment, as the red phaser light made his cheeks glow, Chris swore to a life of pain and solitude.

He immersed himself in cinema, and at the age of 9 he was reenacting scenes from Robocop as performance art pieces. Later, one of his middle school teachers said: "While the other students did book reports on Red Badge of Courage and A Separate Peace, Genoa wrote about the book version of Total Recall and how it was �totally cool.� The boy was a fool."

Looking back on his childhood, Chris once remarked, "I had little flair for camaraderie."

Chris was consistent in his solitude. The aloof boy soon grew into an aloof young man, often so unapproachable he would hiss at people who came within 2 feet of him. He was difficult to talk to--it took hours, or at least a stiff Jack and root beer, for him to warm up--but the ladies could not resist him. The lonely young author, however, would not allow anyone to penetrate his solitude. He once remarked, after rejecting advances from a Scandinavian supermodel, that he was a monster, and should be locked in a cage for the good of humanity. He then growled and did some kind of claw thing with his hands.

His college years at William and Mary were uneventful, as was his time abroad in London at King�s College. Chris often neglected his studies, choosing instead to spend his days reading and re-reading the novels of such authors as Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and Samuel Beckett.

After college, Chris moved to New Orleans, and the city quickly won not his heart, but his loins. Lacking any means of support, he became a bartender in the French Quarter where he saw many people Le Bon Temps Roule by fornicating all over his bar to the romantic sounds of Zydeco. He also enrolled in film school while in New Orleans and at the tender age of 24 he made a very short film about marshmallow peeps coming to life and killing people. Shortly after that he decided he needed to get the hell out of New Orleans.

Chris then moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he wrote the underground hit bizarre comedy Foop!, which was published by Eraserhead Press in the spring of 2005. A year after that he completed his second novel, a dark alternate history comedy called Lick Your Neighbor: A Novel of America. Whether or not this wild romp through early and modern America will ever see the light of day is still unknown. It seems that Chris grossly overestimated the demand for books featuring both Mayflower Pilgrims and mutant ninjas.

Chris is currently at work on his third book, The Monkey & the Barrel: A Novel of Kung Fu and Foolish Love.