Dennis Liggio has always had a tendency toward geeky things. Whether it was being fascinated with the art in his older brother's 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons books, stories of myths and legend, knowing from a young age that a lasgun plus a shield equaled a big explosion, or always loving the old comics that were in the bin at the barber shop, that tendency was always there. His parents thought him an artistic child, but where other art class students focused on flowers and still lifes, Dennis only wanted to draw monsters and heroes.
He'd like to call himself someone with a lifelong love affair of reading, but Dennis can remember a time when he just didn't read. He read as school needed, he still had an affection for Fox in Socks, but it wasn't a regular thing or a passion. The breakthrough was when he was going to the library with his family. He went along for the ride, as his mother and one brother went weekly, but on that trip he saw a book that interested him. He saw the size of the book and figured that it would last him all month. Once he got home, he started reading. He was so engrossed in it that he kept reading it whenever he had time, and since it was the summer, he had many opportunities. Two days later he found himself finished with the book, completely surprised. He begged his mother to go back to the library sooner so he could get more books. That summer he realized he had to borrow a few books in a single library trip, as he discovered that he would get the book in the evening, start reading before bed, then wake up in the morning and finish the rest of the book. He fondly remembers going through most of Robert Asprin's MYTH series this way that summer. Dennis remains ever a fan and proponent of public library systems.
Dennis first encountered HP Lovecraft in Junior High in an old blank-cover hardcover borrowed from the library. He had heard Lovecraft wrote horror and was something special, but he had never really read something that truly scared him before. In the end of a slow Home Economics period he read the first story in the volume, "In the Vault". By the time the period was over, he was uneasy, he was overly conscious of his ankles, and he had experienced something he would never forget. Other of Lovecraft's stories were more colorful, more frantic, more cosmically flailing, but he never forgot his first Lovecraft.
Sometime in High School Dennis decided that he should be a writer, that creating stories was just what he should be doing. This was of course in the absence of any story to tell and without much attention to writing outside his school courses. What followed were aimless pages of poetry, both prose and conventional, disconnected dream stories, and surrealistic bits of stories that went nowhere. There was even a full length novel, Iconojunky, from this period, a disjointed postmodernist mess too influenced by William S Burroughs that hopefully will never see the light of day in any form similar to where it was left. The world is not ready for that horror.
When Dennis left his home state of New York and went to the University of Texas at Austin, he kept writing, but a blow was struck by the Fates that put his writing career on hold. His laptop was stolen. Besides losing work in progress, it was also his only personal computer and he couldn't afford another. The computer lab was too noisy and inconvenient for writing and his classes too stressful and time consuming to continue hacking at stories, so for a while, writing slipped away.
In 2003, after graduating college and working a stressful corporate job for a few years, he quit and reclaimed his life. And the writing bug came back with a vengeance. This is when he began the book that would eventually become Voices of Madness. Of course, that first draft would take years while Dennis worked in the game industry. A sprawling first draft of Voices was finally completed in 2008, just to get it done and start on the next novel. The Lost and the Damned followed. This was a much quicker write - during the time of finishing Voices, he had been aching to start The Lost and the Damned, so much was already sketched out in his head. In a few months, it was finished and a month or two after that, it had a final draft.
Exuberant and proud, he began querying agents. Years passed as the query process did not go as planned. There were rejections, of course, but that was expected. The agents who never replied back at all were more disheartening. Worse were the agents that asked for a manuscript, said they would absolutely reply back in a certain period, then never got back to him until double that time. His enthusiasm dampened, his writing slowed in this climate.
In 2010, he began the Damned Lies Project website. A place to post absurd stories that became episodic, it was a place for him to also post reviews and a few roughly sketched webcomics. The absurd stories would later become the heart of Damned Lies and portions of Damned Lies Strike Back. Later in 2010 he wrote Cowards and Killers. A darker work for a darker time in his life, he was proud of what he had created and once again began querying agents with this work. Unfortunately, the results were the same as before. The Damned Lies Project eventually slowed and was closed down.
In 2014, he finally listened to the advice of people dear to him and embarked on self-publishing. In quick succession he put out the horror novel, The Lost and The Damned, the dark novel, Cowards and Killers, and the first two Damned Lies books, Damned Lies and Damned Lies Strike Back. He discovered a funny thing: having your works out and having people enjoy them both give great motivation to write more. The third Damned Lies book, Damned Lies of the Dead 3D, came soon after. Then came the fan favorite novella, Cthulhu, Private Investigator. Riding that high, he decided to try to retread the past, taking some time to get Voices of Madness into an enjoyable state in late 2014.
2015 has been the year of New Avalon, as Dennis has started this new setting for newer books. The city of New Avalon is a modern American city where strange things happen. Dennis wanted a city that he could destroy buildings, create his own geography and urban myths. Most importantly, he didn't want readers to hear about some important monument being destroyed but then be able to go to that city and still be there. New Avalon is his sandbox for whatever he needs to do. Within this city he has started three series of different tones. First are the jobs of the Nowak Brothers, two punk twentysomethings who kill monsters underground. The first novel is I Kill Monsters and the second will show up late in 2015. The second are the strange and nearly outlandish adventures of Dane Monday, an enthusiastic and frenetic investigator and his aspiring journalist companion as they deal with such things as mad scientists, magic, and robots. This series begins with Manic Monday, the next novel coming in 2016. The third series involves a college aged mystery gang investigating a murder that become involved in a battle of Good vs Evil for the fate of the world. Of course, like the good comic book fan Dennis is, no New Avalon book or series exists in a vacuum. In a living, breathing city, it's not unreasonable for the stories to affect each other or the characters to even encounter each other...
In 2016, Dennis and his awesome wife welcomed their first child into the world: a daughter who will topple the existing order, reign fire down from the Heavens, and rule with the full might of an arcane army brought forth from the place in between realms through the power of an ancient oath (his wife sees things differently). While this may or may not have affected his writing and release schedule, he would not change things for all the success in the world.
Dennis isn't just about reading or writing, of course. He is a big fan of video games, board games, anime, comics, and music. But he admittedly tends to be a bit behind compared to what's current. He's currently playing God of War, catching up on Legion, off and on is disappointed he hasn't played more Shadows of Brimstone, is excited for Forbidden Fortress's roku demon bag, and is excited for the Murder by Death cover he picked in the Kickstarter.
Dennis is currently at work on New Avalon books, including a New Avalon Christmas story. He knows some of you are waiting for a new John Keats story or a sequel of Cowards and Killers. Both will eventually happen, but he doesn't know when yet. However feel free to contact him and tell him how much you want those. He also appreciates hearing from you! Contact him through his website, www.dennisliggio.com, on social media, or at [email protected].
He'd like to call himself someone with a lifelong love affair of reading, but Dennis can remember a time when he just didn't read. He read as school needed, he still had an affection for Fox in Socks, but it wasn't a regular thing or a passion. The breakthrough was when he was going to the library with his family. He went along for the ride, as his mother and one brother went weekly, but on that trip he saw a book that interested him. He saw the size of the book and figured that it would last him all month. Once he got home, he started reading. He was so engrossed in it that he kept reading it whenever he had time, and since it was the summer, he had many opportunities. Two days later he found himself finished with the book, completely surprised. He begged his mother to go back to the library sooner so he could get more books. That summer he realized he had to borrow a few books in a single library trip, as he discovered that he would get the book in the evening, start reading before bed, then wake up in the morning and finish the rest of the book. He fondly remembers going through most of Robert Asprin's MYTH series this way that summer. Dennis remains ever a fan and proponent of public library systems.
Dennis first encountered HP Lovecraft in Junior High in an old blank-cover hardcover borrowed from the library. He had heard Lovecraft wrote horror and was something special, but he had never really read something that truly scared him before. In the end of a slow Home Economics period he read the first story in the volume, "In the Vault". By the time the period was over, he was uneasy, he was overly conscious of his ankles, and he had experienced something he would never forget. Other of Lovecraft's stories were more colorful, more frantic, more cosmically flailing, but he never forgot his first Lovecraft.
Sometime in High School Dennis decided that he should be a writer, that creating stories was just what he should be doing. This was of course in the absence of any story to tell and without much attention to writing outside his school courses. What followed were aimless pages of poetry, both prose and conventional, disconnected dream stories, and surrealistic bits of stories that went nowhere. There was even a full length novel, Iconojunky, from this period, a disjointed postmodernist mess too influenced by William S Burroughs that hopefully will never see the light of day in any form similar to where it was left. The world is not ready for that horror.
When Dennis left his home state of New York and went to the University of Texas at Austin, he kept writing, but a blow was struck by the Fates that put his writing career on hold. His laptop was stolen. Besides losing work in progress, it was also his only personal computer and he couldn't afford another. The computer lab was too noisy and inconvenient for writing and his classes too stressful and time consuming to continue hacking at stories, so for a while, writing slipped away.
In 2003, after graduating college and working a stressful corporate job for a few years, he quit and reclaimed his life. And the writing bug came back with a vengeance. This is when he began the book that would eventually become Voices of Madness. Of course, that first draft would take years while Dennis worked in the game industry. A sprawling first draft of Voices was finally completed in 2008, just to get it done and start on the next novel. The Lost and the Damned followed. This was a much quicker write - during the time of finishing Voices, he had been aching to start The Lost and the Damned, so much was already sketched out in his head. In a few months, it was finished and a month or two after that, it had a final draft.
Exuberant and proud, he began querying agents. Years passed as the query process did not go as planned. There were rejections, of course, but that was expected. The agents who never replied back at all were more disheartening. Worse were the agents that asked for a manuscript, said they would absolutely reply back in a certain period, then never got back to him until double that time. His enthusiasm dampened, his writing slowed in this climate.
In 2010, he began the Damned Lies Project website. A place to post absurd stories that became episodic, it was a place for him to also post reviews and a few roughly sketched webcomics. The absurd stories would later become the heart of Damned Lies and portions of Damned Lies Strike Back. Later in 2010 he wrote Cowards and Killers. A darker work for a darker time in his life, he was proud of what he had created and once again began querying agents with this work. Unfortunately, the results were the same as before. The Damned Lies Project eventually slowed and was closed down.
In 2014, he finally listened to the advice of people dear to him and embarked on self-publishing. In quick succession he put out the horror novel, The Lost and The Damned, the dark novel, Cowards and Killers, and the first two Damned Lies books, Damned Lies and Damned Lies Strike Back. He discovered a funny thing: having your works out and having people enjoy them both give great motivation to write more. The third Damned Lies book, Damned Lies of the Dead 3D, came soon after. Then came the fan favorite novella, Cthulhu, Private Investigator. Riding that high, he decided to try to retread the past, taking some time to get Voices of Madness into an enjoyable state in late 2014.
2015 has been the year of New Avalon, as Dennis has started this new setting for newer books. The city of New Avalon is a modern American city where strange things happen. Dennis wanted a city that he could destroy buildings, create his own geography and urban myths. Most importantly, he didn't want readers to hear about some important monument being destroyed but then be able to go to that city and still be there. New Avalon is his sandbox for whatever he needs to do. Within this city he has started three series of different tones. First are the jobs of the Nowak Brothers, two punk twentysomethings who kill monsters underground. The first novel is I Kill Monsters and the second will show up late in 2015. The second are the strange and nearly outlandish adventures of Dane Monday, an enthusiastic and frenetic investigator and his aspiring journalist companion as they deal with such things as mad scientists, magic, and robots. This series begins with Manic Monday, the next novel coming in 2016. The third series involves a college aged mystery gang investigating a murder that become involved in a battle of Good vs Evil for the fate of the world. Of course, like the good comic book fan Dennis is, no New Avalon book or series exists in a vacuum. In a living, breathing city, it's not unreasonable for the stories to affect each other or the characters to even encounter each other...
In 2016, Dennis and his awesome wife welcomed their first child into the world: a daughter who will topple the existing order, reign fire down from the Heavens, and rule with the full might of an arcane army brought forth from the place in between realms through the power of an ancient oath (his wife sees things differently). While this may or may not have affected his writing and release schedule, he would not change things for all the success in the world.
Dennis isn't just about reading or writing, of course. He is a big fan of video games, board games, anime, comics, and music. But he admittedly tends to be a bit behind compared to what's current. He's currently playing God of War, catching up on Legion, off and on is disappointed he hasn't played more Shadows of Brimstone, is excited for Forbidden Fortress's roku demon bag, and is excited for the Murder by Death cover he picked in the Kickstarter.
Dennis is currently at work on New Avalon books, including a New Avalon Christmas story. He knows some of you are waiting for a new John Keats story or a sequel of Cowards and Killers. Both will eventually happen, but he doesn't know when yet. However feel free to contact him and tell him how much you want those. He also appreciates hearing from you! Contact him through his website, www.dennisliggio.com, on social media, or at [email protected].
