Gene Lee

I was born a breech baby in 1950s Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Mother’s side of family were lawyers, judges, and pioneers of Ft. Lauderdale. Father’s side of family? Not so much, being mainly drunks, bookmakers, and the like.

I planned to be a lawyer, but eventually—brought up in a family of readers and in love with books ever since reading Tarzan, the Ape-man in third grade—around the age of thirteen I began to re-think a law career. Influenced by Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I started writing stories.

Reality caught up to me in my early 30’s. To pay the bills I started a mundane career in pest control, married, and raised a family in my hometown. During the 1980”s I stumbled into the poetry scene of South Florida and became heavily involved, reading my poetry at any available venue, as well as publishing that poetry in small literary magazines across the country.

I moved my family to Sebastian, FL in 1990 for the good fishing in the Indian River, as well as to get out of the madness of Ft. Lauderdale and bring my daughter up in a smaller community.

I started writing fiction again in 2004, creating the stories—though I had no idea at the time that would be the case—that would develop into the novel, Men Without Hate. I am currently working on a prequel of sorts to Men Without Hate, as well as revising a novel I wrote during the long process of finding a home for Men Without Hate. And of course, I'm deeply pleased that Men Without Hate now has a home at the excellent All Things That Matter Press.

On my off time I enjoy fly fishing in the Indian River for the snook, redfish, and tarpon roaming those waters, wing shooting in season, as well as maintaining a voracious, and longstanding, reading habit.