Adam Apellasios
From Legacyview Dictionary of Biography
Adam K. Apellasios stepped onto the wrestling mat at age nine and onto the writers' path at 21 upon attending Northern Illinois University, where he best loved the protest literature from his BA in English. He wrestled and coached until he hung up his headgear at 27 to return to his native Chicago and seek the path that would lead him to coming out, grass dancing at Native American pow wows, and discovering his own heritage as a Greek-American. He has earned an MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University and continues to practice what he calls "method writing" by living the adventures that become more truth than fact. Paco the Great was his first book, the first step in this journey of a thousand miles.
His second novel, The Book of Jeremiah, was actually the one he finished first, and he had started his third, Called to the Mat (told by a supporting character from books I and II) before finally finishing the first part of book I. Books IV and V, Rotten Kid and Adam's Sins, remain available only by personal request, since they develop background on the character Chad Tarzinsky (supporting cast in books I, II, and III) and introduce Adam, an "orphan" who furthers the writer's admiration for Charles Dickens. Adam's story shows another side of Chad, the part of his life away from wrestling, just as book VI's hero, John, is part of Paco's life off the mat. Book VII, Rocks, retells some of The Book of Jeremiah, but the writer's methods and style elaborate much differently since he wrote this novel six years after beginning the series. Rocks seems to serialize Jeremiah's epic since he narrates most except where other characters write letters or his dog alter ego takes over. Rocks also reintroduces Adam five years after Adam's Sins (the chronological first), and the reader meets Eric, as well. Eric is the star of book VIII, Pejiwaci, which means "grass dancer" in reference to a Native American style. Pejiwaci, subtitled Grass Boy, and Sun Boy (book IX) remain unpublished as does the latest, book X, titled Cute Little Monster, which revisits Chad turning 30 in over 250 sonnets. Apellasios describes this work as a "sonnetary novel" in the tradition of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets which mock classical romance and detail the story that seems to occur between the sonnets.
Apellasios as a writer read all of Paco the Great on a podcast and introduced parts of Rocks, Sun Boy, and Cute Little Monster. He remains open and available to email requests for his books.
