Author

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed” – Ernest Hemingway

Toward the Mark Books

Retired from 40 years of high school and college classrooms, you’re now likely to find Steve on a pickleball court somewhere. He is quite simply addicted to the game.

His BA in British Literature from Akron University led him to Donne, Browning, Milton, and Shakespeare, to Middlemarch and Far From the Madding Crowd. His more likely muses run closer to Steinbeck and Hemmingway and he still owns a dog-eared Nick Adams Stories paperback that he bought his sophomore year in high school.

Writing and its discipline and craft bring him joy. A good read or a good movie always worth sharing. Steve and his wife Patti share a passion for travel and have made memories in places new and revisited memories in places old.

Writer Steve Pustay not only has the background of pickleball down, but he has done his homework on the details of the crime. I enjoyed a more detailed account to this particular crime as well. A nice easy summertime read that makes me want to have more from these characters and this writer's pen!

Vicki Ropp

My Books

Only the 2nd book to be endorsed by the USAPA, Inside the Game breaks new ground and brings the power of statistically significant data to help players understand what makes and breaks their game.

“Inside the Game is a facinating read full of important and useful information designed to help those looking to improve their game” – USAPA

Based on a yearlong study, the first of its kind for Pickleball, hundreds of professional and amateur games were mapped for stroke errors, ball-strike accuracy, ball speed, court position advantage and dozens of additional metrics. The results of the study provide a definitive picture of what fails when games are lost and establishes clear goals to be met for winning play. The study frames a statistically significant portrait of the game, and for the first time establishes a baseline for winning play. Interviews with professional players add perspective from their on-court experience and expand the narrative with practice tips and match strategies to help improve the level of any player’s game.

Foul play and pickleball are not strangers. At least that’s the opinion of Naples homicide detective Thomas Fraiser. It’s the second time he’s been called to a pickleball court to stand over a dead body. The first body fell in the silent dark of night on an empty court in a gated community. This time, a life ended at 9-3-1 on court 47 at the US Open, pickleball’s biggest party. A hundred eyes watched the body drop, but it’s Fraiser’s eyes that have to see the truth of how and why this life was taken.

Fraiser’s partner, Fran Degardo arrived at the courts before him. She came wearing an athlete’s badge, her detective’s shield tucked deep inside her bag. She came with little hope of rising to the podium in this her first tournament. She came instead to test her mettle, to make a measure in this game that had become her escape from the horrors of bodies broken and lifeless. Degardo realized that the forty-four by twenty-foot boundaries of a pickleball court offered no protection against the evils in this world.

Fraiser and his team have once again come to face death on the court. To lead his team, he must wrestle the demons of all the victims who have trusted him to bring them peace, ferrying them unbidden into his dreams at night. He must once again uncover the one who thought murder might be the final solution.

Marc Nixon manages the Moonlight Madness pickleball league for the peaceful, gated community of Harbor Hills. The most popular mixed-doubles league in the county has a waiting list a mile long and features matches battled under the lights with gentle breezes drifting in from the Gulf. Marc imagines the courts, the spirited competition, the pop of paddles in the night air to be, frankly, perfect. Marc is perfectly wrong. A 3 am dog walk, following an evening of spirited play, exposes a horror that leads him to confront secrets never meant for the light of day. Detective Thomas Fraiser and his partner, Fran Degardo, pass through the Harbor Hills security gates and into a space meant to be sheltered from the polluting influence of tourists, retail strips, and box stores outside. Detective Fraiser knows the metal lift-gates are no protection against greed and jealousy and evil. He knows, because his own demons have come along for the ride.

Ayn Barese, eldest of identical triplets born to Youngstown mob Capo Nicolo Barese and his wife Mary Rose, uncovers a secret threat to her family’s privileged lifestyle. Nicolo, has agreed with the Federal Prosecutor in Cleveland, Ohio to turn states’ evidence. He will abandon his wife and children, enter witness protection, and violate the blood-oath sworn to his Youngstown Mafia family. Ayn holds the truth close to her heart until she is certain that there is only one way forward.
Ayn must persuade her sisters Aurora and Amelia to join a devil’s bargain to save her family and do the unthinkable. Nicolo Barese must be stopped and the family business saved.

There are places in this world we shouldn’t go, powers we’ll never understand, problems we couldn’t hope to solve. When 17 year old Aaron Hall, an ordinary high school athlete who never sought the spotlight, discovers an ancient warrior’s secret for stealing the breath of his enemies, he determines to use it only to shame a vicious bully. But the addictive powers of the breath-stealing recipe aren’t easily controlled and Aaron struggles to understand who he has become under the seductive influence of being for the first time in his life, the hero.