T.V LoCicero’s Backstory
A checkered past…
At one time or another I’ve found work as an industrial spy; a producer of concert videos for Rolling Stone’s 
greatest singer of all time; a rare male contributor to Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine; a writer of an appellate brief for those convicted in one of Detroit’s most sensational drug trials; the author of a true crime book that garnered a bigger advance than an all-time top-ten best-selling American novel; a project coordinator/fundraiser for a humanities council; a small business owner; the writer/producer/director of numerous long-form documentaries; a golf course clerk; a college instructor who taught courses in advanced composition, 
music and poetry appreciation, introduction to philosophy, remedial English, and American Literature—all in the same term; a ghostwriter; a maker of corporate/industrial videos; a member of a highway surveying crew; a speechwriter for auto executives; a TV producer of live event specials; an editorial writer; the creator of 15-second corporate promos for the PBS series Nature; and a novelist.
There is a sense in which that last occupation was the reason for all the others. Almost anyone who’s ever tried to make ends meet as a novelist knows what I’m talking about.
Now the more conventional bio…
I was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and grew up there after my first dozen years in Detroit. 
I attended Notre Dame and graduated with a B.A. and M.A from the University of Michigan. I’ve worked in both print and electronic journalism, as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction and as a producer of documentaries as well as entertainment and cultural specials. I’m the author of the true crime books Murder in the Synagogue (Prentice-Hall), on the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. My novels include the coming-of-age story Sicilian Quilt, The romance When A Pretty Woman Smiles, and the crime thrillers The Car Bomb, Admission of Guilt, and Babytrick (The detroit im dyin Trilogy, and The Obsession and The Disappearance, the first two in the Truth Beauty Trilogy. Fourteen of my shorter works are available in the collection called Coming Up Short. These include the stories and essays I have published in various periodicals such as Commentary,, Ms. and The University Review, and the hard-cover collections Best Magazine Articles, The Norton Reader and The Third Coast.
I’ve operated my own TV and video production company and written, produced and directed more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features and 30 live event programs. My syndicated documentary special “Hoffa: The True Story” appeared on 150 stations in this country and throughout Europe, and my work has been recognized with 22 Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Gold Medal from the International Film and TV Festival of New York and numerous awards from the Associated Press and United Press International.
A true tale of deceit and criminality in the publishing business…
My career as an author began in 1970 with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, a true crime account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler in a suburban Detroit temple on Lincoln’s birthday, 1966. The book explored the behavior and psyche of a brilliant graduate student—Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Michigan, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow bound for the Divinity School at the University of Chicago—an idealistic but troubled intellectual seeker who accused his audience of 700 congregants of being hypocrites and materialists, and then turned a gun on the rabbi and himself.
Murder was a window on the turbulent 1960s, when one of the hot literary topics was the rise of the “non-fiction novel.” Word was that my publisher, Prentice- Hall, saw my book as a kind of Jewish In Cold Blood, and so in the same year that Mario Puzo got $5000 for what would become The Godfather, I received an advance of $8500.
Upon publication, Murder drew a number of positive reviews, often in odd, out-of-the-way places, and praise from psychiatric experts, religious figures and academics to whom I sent copies. But the eastern literary establishment seemed to have never heard of it, and sales were slow. Soon I learned that Prentice-Hall had suppressed Murder in the Synagogue, printing 4000 copies from standing type which was then pied or dismantled—the method used for a “limited edition”—and sabotaging its marketing and distribution. It had secretly bowed to pressure from an influential presidential adviser and top Republican fund-raiser.
When a remarkable young woman from Detroit’s Jewish community told me she had heard this wealthy and powerful man tell a group of friends that he had “squelched” my book, I first verified her story and then did what any foolishly high-minded young writer would do. I went to Prentice-Hall, accused them of destroying my book and demanded and secured its rights. Then I wrote another book about what had happened to Murder.
Eventually, I moved on to a busy life as a TV producer/writer/director. Over the ensuing years, my output included more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features, 30 live event programs and (yikes!) 600 editorials. Actually I still do some of that kind of work, but I never stopped writing.
And then the world changed. Digital disruption hit the publishing business, and it no longer matters all that much what an agent or a publisher will look at. For 30 years I had lost the manuscript of my book about what was done to Murder, but when it came back to me, I brought it up to date and some years ago offered it as Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue, in both ebook and paper formats. I also published an e-version of Murder, which is available on the wondrous Amazon, along with the 1200 copies of that original hard-cover edition of Murder that I’ve kept stored in basements and garages all these years.