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Gene Lee

Goodreads Author

Born

in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, The United States

Website

http://geneleeauthor.com/

Genre

Historical Fiction, Fiction

Member Since

September 2018

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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.

My parents divorced when I was four due to my father’s extreme alcoholism, a lovely gift he managed to pass on to me. Mother went to law school, while myself and two older sisters were looked over by a succession of nannies. Weekends and summers were spent on grandfather’s cattle ranch in Jupiter, Fl where I learned to fish and shoot and ride horses.

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 thirtee 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.

My parents divorced when I was four due to my father’s extreme alcoholism, a lovely gift he managed to pass on to me. Mother went to law school, while myself and two older sisters were looked over by a succession of nannies. Weekends and summers were spent on grandfather’s cattle ranch in Jupiter, Fl where I learned to fish and shoot and ride horses.

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.

When I was fifteen I stole a copy of Kerouac’s On the Road from the drugstore, and when I finished it immediately ran away from home, looking for the road and the kicks Kerouac had written about. My road trip didn’t last long and after being returned home by the authorities I entered high school, where Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and the hippie explosion of the ‘60’s steered me into the counterculture. The fact that the local narcotic agents in Gainesville, FL, were breathing heavy down my neck, convinced me to drop out of college in 1972 and become what I envisioned as being a wandering Beat poet.

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.

Due to health concerns related to my alcoholism, I retired in 1999. With more free time on my hands, along with being clean and sober after a thirty year run, I started writing fiction again. In 2004 I began writing 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.
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Men Without Hate

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Gene Lee's Blog

Herman Wouk

Am halfway through the second of the two books Wouk wrote about the beginnings of Israel after the end of WW2. The Hope is the first and The Glory is the second. Have to hand it to Work...he was a great storyteller. Doesn't mean he was a great writer per se..and that is just my opinion. But he damn sure could tell a story. The Israel books are almost as good as his WW2 books...The Winds of War fol Read more of this blog post »

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