Tears and Tales: October 2006

About Me

Location: Kentucky, United States

Russell A. Vassallo was born in Newark, New Jersey, on April 24, 1934. He graduated from Seton Hall University and Seton Hall School of Law. When depression threatened him after retirement, his wife, Virginia, also a attorney, encouraged him to battle back by writing. To his surprise, he discovered that growing older, maturing and becoming a senior citizen had given him the insight he’d always lacked. Now he hopes writing will not only cure him but will aid animal charities as well as people suffering depression. “You can fight back and win,” he laughs. Russ is retired now and he and Virginia live on a farm in central Kentucky where Russ works the land, rides horses and lives an active and productive life. Russ has written two books about his animal friends, but he is by no means limited to animal stories. Of his new found career, he has this to say: "As long as people read and enjoy what I write…I’ll keep writing."

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Award Winning Book

To my great shock, my book Tears and Tales: Stories of Animal and Human Rescue won an award. That's right. It placed as a finalist in the USABookNews Best Books 2006 Book Award contest in the Fiction & Literature: Short Story/Fiction category. My wife was jumping up and down from the excitement. I was much calmer, believing that there must be a catch somewhere. So far I haven't found one. So I think, just maybe, it's time to get excited about the award too.

We've been on a cruise for a couple of weeks which I will write more about in the next couple of days. We cruised the west coast of Italy and the French Riviera and visited Elba, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Tunesia. Since I never really wanted to visit Europe, Virginia nearly had to drag me to go BUT it was a wonderful trip AND we even found a few places we would love to go back to.

We are still playing catch up around the farm -- trying to get one big field planted into between the rain drops and frost! And trying to get the horses ready for the winter. Plus before this latest frost we were battling with the Asian lady bugs that some governmental agency released a number of years ago to eat tomato bugs. Unfortunately, the Asian lady bugs have to predators in the United States so they are just multiplying like rabbits -- or maybe faster -- and every fall they try to come into warm houses to propagate/hibernate. So for about a week my occupation was resealing windows and doors and vacuuming up lady bugs. Quite a come down from a great cruise!