hugh lessig

I grew up in a blue-collar household in eastern Pennsylvania. My dad was a truck driver, as was his younger brother. They were the 8th and 9th children of a Depression-era family, raised by a single mother whose husband was a railroad engineer and died in a head-on collision of two trains in New Jersey.

Driving a truck in that part of Pennsylvania meant multiple trips to New York city. Dad hauled slate, dry goods and cement. His younger brother, Emrys, did the same. Along the way, they met plenty of characters and saw people do weird things behind the wheel. To them, it was shop talk. Uncle Emrys came to the house from time to time, and they would exchange stories of the road. They were better storytellers than they realized.

I wanted to tell stories, too. But for me, a ham-handed and awkward kid, life was safer behind a keyboard than a steering wheel. My first love was history, but I was better at writing. I majored in journalism at Moravian College – now Moravian University — and worked at newspapers in Lebanon and Bloomsburg, Pa. Even though I grew up in the Watergate generation, I was never hot on finding corruption. I wanted to write about characters: the good guys, ne’er do wells and just plain odd.

After 12 years in Pennsylvania, I continued my newspaper career in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Writing about state government, I sat in back seats with governors and senators. As a military reporter, I covered the Navy’s relief effort for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, spent time onboard aircraft carriers and sailed under the ocean on a Virginia class submarine.

But characters always made the story, and that helped fuel my love for writing fiction.

When you work in newspapers for 30 years, you see what happens when regular people are placed in extraordinary situations. They win the lottery or get caught in mass layoffs. They rescue a child from a burning building or find their spouse in bed with a lover. That’s what drives my fiction, not the criminal geniuses or serial killers, but the guy next door.

So, where can you find me?

Check out Down & Out Books. My stories can be found in several anthologies they’ve published, including the “Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir” series. I’ve got stories in four of the first five volumes (I missed number three) and those books have many great crime writers.

I also have stories in “Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties,” and “Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment.”

My most recent anthology compiles crime stories inspired by Waffle House. It’s called “Scattered, Smothered, Covered and Chunked.” Check it out.

My first novella, “Refried Beans and Snub-Nosed .44,” is part of the Guns + Tacos series, also from Down & Out. My second novella is “Hunka, Hunka Burning Rubber,” part of the Chop Shop series.

“Fadeway Joe” is my debut novel. You can read more about it elsewhere on this website.

Today, I work in public communications for Newport News Shipbuilding and live in lovely Hampton, Virginia, with Shana, my companion and best friend ever, and our dogs, Gus and Daisey.

Thanks for visiting. Feel free to drop me a line. Talking to writers – and readers – is my favorite thing in the world.