Brian Centrone is not your ordinary professor. In his free time, he doesn’t watch television or go on hikes because as a published author, who has time for that?

As well as being an English professor at both Pace University and Westchester Community College, writing books has always been a passion for Centrone.

“I have always loved books and I always liked writing,” Centrone said.” So the thought of studying literature and creating literature has always appealed to me.”

Since 2003, Centrone has published numerous poems and short stories but he has always wanted to tackle the challenge of publishing a novel.

Originally his senior thesis at Fordham University, Centrone brought his thesis turned novel to graduate school in Manchester so he could get feedback from his fellow students.

“The other students did not really get it and that bothered me,” Centrone said.”The feedback was not helpful, and I felt l like I was not progressing here because people either didn’t get it, or they were trying to turn it into something that it wasn’t.”

But that was not going to stop Centrone, he journeyed back to America with the intention to publish his book, and in 2013 his dream came true.

The novel was called An Ordinary Boy, but Centrone’s experience of publishing the book was bittersweet, due to his publisher having the same intent as Centrone’s classmates in Manchester.

“The publisher tried to cut corners throughout the book,” Centrone said. “He did all the editing and he did not know what he was doing, so he printed the books with a bunch of errors and typos.”

Centrone believes that his editing caused his book to have a poor critical response, and to not be available for print anymore.

Nonetheless, Centrone was not about to give up on his dream, he followed his novel with a short story collection called I Voted for Biddy Schumacher: Mismatched Tales from the Mind of Brian Centrone.

Following that, he then published his third book called Erotica, which was again another collection of short stories.

“I think short stories are a really great genre to work in,” Centrone said.”They are snapshots of little ideas that you want to work in.”

Given the freedom over the content of these two books, Centrone was much more pleased with the final result.

“I got a lot of very good reviews for the books,” Centrone said. “It really gave me a lot more confidence in my writing.”

Although Centrone was happy with his positive feedback, he acknowledges that writing short stories do not have the same impact as writing novels.

“The novel is really a whole different ball game,” Centrone said. “It was really the first time that a large group of people were actually reading and responding to my work. The short stories were a small handful and the novel was a lot more.”

The popularity of novel reading is still something the Centrone desperately wants to get back into.

Under the direction of a new publisher Centrone is working on a new novel that he hopes to complete soon.