Former Mattituck resident returns for book tour

Joe Krupski, a former Mattituck resident, will be on Long Island Aug. 16 through Aug. 22 to promote his book trilogy, “The Bailie Beach Saga,” which is set on the North Fork.  

A pivotal experience in high school created a lifelong desire to be an author. In his senior year his English teacher asked the class to write a short story. They had a choice of nonfiction or fiction, and Mr. Krupski chose fiction. 


“When I got my paper back, it was marked up pretty heavily in red because of punctuation and grammatical errors. But at the top of the page was an A-plus,” said Mr. Krupski. “She held me back after class and explained to me why I got the A-plus. 
She said it was the most interesting story of all the stories that were submitted.”

Even through all of life’s choices, Mr. Krupski held onto his ambition to write. He had a career with Kodak, married and raised children, but the urge to be an author never left. Finally, in the early 2000s, he began. It took many fits and starts, but eventually he wrote “Bailie Beach.” He chose to self-publish after hearing stories of how difficult traditional publishing could be.

“That was the route that I chose to go, figuring, I didn’t have a lot of time to spend two years looking for an agent, which was what I had heard in most of the stories about trying to get an agent or submitting it to publishers. I wanted to self-publish now,” said Mr. Krupski.

After writing the first novel, which is based on his own experience in college, the main character seemed to take on a life of his own. Mr. Krupski found there were more stories for him to tell, and decided to expand the novel into a series.

“When I looked at the events that happened, in my mind, I saw that this story could take to a new level. So, the next two books that were to follow in the trilogy are basically all fiction,” Mr. Krupski said.

Mr. Krupski is now working on a fourth novel, a murder mystery set in a community in Florida where he used to live.

“It’s about a series of murders that take place in The Villages in Florida, where I actually lived for 15 years and from 2002 to 2017. So I wrote this story, and I just had this idea of doing a murder story about a serial killer,” said Mr. Krupski.

On Aug. 17, from 2 to 4 p.m., Mr. Krupski will be at the Bailie Beach Scout Lodge, 2205 Bailie Beach Road, and on Aug. 19, from 4 to 5 p.m., he will be at the Mattituck-Laurel Library. His final stop on the book tour is the Riverhead Library on Aug. 21, from 2 to 3 p.m.