You’re about to enter the ‘Rondinone Zone’

BY KARL VILACOBA
Staff Writer

KARL VILACOBA Brick resident Craig Rondinone has written fantasy baseball columns for ESPN.com and other Web sites. His new book is a collection of his favorite short fiction pieces.

If there’s a middle ground between the worlds of sports and horror, it could be professional wrestling. So it may not be a surprise that in the forward for "Ten Tales to Make Your Head Explode," author Craig Rondinone, a sportswriter by trade, thanks World Wrestling Entertainment mogul Vince McMahon for inspiration.

"It was kind of a joke," said Rondinone, 33, of Brick. "But I took some of the ideas for the fight sequences in the book from things I’ve seen in pro wrestling."

Such may have been the case in the first of the book’s short stories, "Honor Among All of Us," when a professional assassin fends off an attack by his pupil, Rick Winston, by cracking him on the head with a Singapore cane. The Winston character recurs in a few of the book’s 10 tales, in-volved with everything from romantic plots to vampire slaying.

With their mix of horror and dark comedy elements, Rondinone’s are the kind of stories that could form the basis of "Twilight Zone" episodes.

In the standout "The Dead Zone," the author marries mystery with his sports background. The story centers on an arrogant major league baseball player who gets hit in the face with a pitch, and wakes in a dreary, empty stadium for an at-bat of the highest stakes. The pitcher in this purgatory-like setting warns the batter that he’s in a coma, and if he doesn’t hit a home run off him, he’ll lose his life.

Rondinone currently edits real-time sports information for ESPN SportsTicker in Jersey City and writes "Rotisserie by the Numbers" fantasy baseball columns, which can be read on Yahoo.com, ESPN.com and other Web sites. However, fiction writing has been a longtime hobby that goes back to Rondinone’s days at Brick Memorial High School (class of 1988) and then Monmouth College, where he majored in communications. He has occasionally freelanced his short stories for literary magazines, and secured an agent and book deal with Baltimore-based Publish
America last year.

Sales have picked up since the book’s March 30 release, he said, perhaps aided by interviews he’s conducted with sports radio shows. "Ten Tales" is currently available at several stores and online outlets, as well as his Web site, www.publishedauthors.net/
craigrondinone.

"The whole summer is going to be about trying to get the book out there," Rondinone said. "A book isn’t like a movie. If it doesn’t do well in the first week, it’s no big deal. It’s a long process."