Genovese with Capone (Al Capone at Madame Tussaud’s San Francisco)

For starters, if you don’t know
anything about the Genovese name, it’s synonymous with Mafia and mob bosses. In
fact, Vito Genovese was known as the Boss of all Bosses. Vito ran the Luciano
(as in Lucky Luciano) crime family for a long time which was later renamed the
Genovese crime family.

Growing up, I was fascinated with mob life. I must have watched The Godfather, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, and Casino a hundred times. I watched documentaries about the mob and read books about it whenever I could. I think a part of me always wanted to grow up to be a made man. There was just something about the way these well-dressed, smooth-talking, money-making tough guys took the respect they wanted. I think it all started when my grandfather told me about the Genovese name and how, even if it was just a little bit, I had Italian blood in me and was related to the Genovese family.

My grandfather, Matthew “Marty” Genovese was full-blooded Sicilian. His accent was thick, he spoke softly, and he carried himself like a real man’s man. Have you ever seen the TV show Oz? I couldn’t see the old Italian mob boss on that show, Antonio Nappa (played by Mark Margolis), without seeing my grandfather. As cool as I thought the old man was, he rarely came around when I was a kid. Usually, when he did, he was an asshole.

For a long time, my mom was basically a single mother. So when Grandpa Marty showed up, he liked to pick at the things he felt my mom wasn’t doing right as far as raising young men went. I still remember when he corrected the way I was sitting. Of course, he did it in front of everyone. He told me boys don’t sit like women. We don’t cross our legs the same way a woman does. Women cross their legs at the knee so men can’t see up their skirts. A man never does that. If he wants to cross his legs, he needs to sit so that the ankle of one foot is resting just above the knee of the other so that it forms a figure four. Look at the picture below. Hell, look up at the picture up top. Even the wax figure of Al Capone crosses his legs Grandpa’s way.

Like this! (Image from StockSnap on pixabay)

His mother was even tougher than he was. Great Grandma Genovese taught me that I was clearly on my way to hell since I’d never been baptized. Seriously. We had this conversation at the dinner table at her home in Fort Pierce, Florida, when she lost her shit (God bless her soul) because I wasn’t yet baptized. That stuck with me for life. I ended up getting baptized with my daughter… eventually, but up until then I always wondered if I was on my way to hell if I didn’t check that off my “to do” list ASAP.

So… why on Earth did I choose my
grandfather’s last name to write under? Well… for some strange reason, I’m
proud of the name. It’s a badass Mafia related name. In some roundabout way,
I’m related to Vito Genovese, and that’s pretty damn cool.

My brother, Kyle, has our dad’s last name tattooed down one forearm and Genovese down the other.

So, even though the old man wasn’t really there for me when I was growing up, and I wanted nothing to do with his name at first, when it came time to choose a pen name, it just suddenly seemed to make sense. I would keep my first name, but I would add my mother’s maiden name. It was time to put the name to more modern use. My wife likes to say it was meant to be like maybe this was my own way of making peace with the old man. He wasn’t there for me in life, but at least his name is here with me in death.

I might not run one of the five
families, but I write some pretty badass characters who’d be willing to try.

So Genovese is a family name. It’s a name that evokes power, it’s a name I respect, and it’s a name I now own as part of my author persona. Or as Derek Adam used to call me #mobboss. That’s why I write under Chris Genovese (and CM Genovese).

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