I have been a freelance editor and writer since 2004. My first paid gigs were for writing short plays and film scripts for a small production company in Atlanta. A theatre-kid, I attended film school and upon graduating thought I was the king fish. Then the production company didn't produce any of the scripts they bought from me and eventually folded. The same thing occurred with several other projects, first a TV show, then a newspaper in Tampa, Florida, and then another TV show, "The Bleepin' Truth," which had started developing a local following before being cancelled a year after I joined. I was no longer a king fish, but a mackerel swimming with hundreds of other hungry mackerels. I thought I would fare better as novelist, and in 2006 one of my short stories, "The Revolutionary," was published in an anthology called THE SHORTCUT, and once again I thought I was a king fish. Then, after submitting my first novel to publisher after publisher, and experienced a long list of rejections despite hundreds of revision and dogged persistence, I began, once again, to wonder if writing was my true calling.

In 2009, I was hired as an editor for Savant Books and Publications and built up a good reputation with Savant authors. One, Jean Blasiar, asked me to collaborate on her first adult dramatic novel, entitled COMMUNION, which Savant published in October 2011, and is available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. TRAVELER'S REST is therefore technically my second book with Savant, though my first wholly-authored work.

I started writing stories when I was ten but when I was fifteen I switched to plays and shortly thereafter, screenplays, but the world of literature kept calling me back. While I still dabble in screenwriting, books, I find, are where I feel most at home. I started to do freelance editing just "to make money," but I when I found that I was pretty good at it and enjoyed the process, that serendipitously reopened the door to being a novelist. After helping a dozen writers realize their own literary dreams, I determined to pursue my own. That's what makes the release of both COMMUNION (Savant 2011)  and now TRAVELER'S REST (Savant 2012) so satisfying. I am now back on the path of telling my own stories. I have another novel in the works, and several stories swimming around my head, waiting to get on paper. I like writing stories that touch me personally and philosophically. My Puerto Rican heritage, and interest in Latin American politics, the ins and outs of relationships, the complexity of love, the inner turmoil people suffer, the search for transcendence in life, are all literary passions of mine, and although my writing tends to revolve around criminals and the lower levels of society, it is always with a concern about the ethics of our society and the internal struggles that we all deal with. My goal is to leave my readers with a vision of the world different from before they read my work, one, hopefully, infinitely more compassionate.

Jonathan Marcantoni
Author of TRAVELER'S REST (Savant 2012)
Co-author of COMMUNION (Savant 2011)