'Repeat' Debut

>>Living in upstate New York, where he was making a comfortable living restoring Victorian porches, Joe Carufe couldn’t have foreseen that, 23 years later, he’d be in Naples, Fla., writing a novel about a psychic. Carufe recently published his debut novel, Repeat Business.

Touching on reincarnation, love, heartbreak and murder, Repeat Business takes place largely in Fort Myers Beach and involves a love story that Carufe says is modeled on Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s relationship. "I [wanted] to throw the girls a bone," he says. "She gets the young stud."

His first experience as a writer came when he was still in New York. As a favor to a friend, he took over a newspaper sports column that parodied a middle-aged men’s softball team. His witty writing for The Putnam County News gained notice, and he was featured reading excerpts from his work on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Tired of the long winters, he moved his family to Southwest Florida about 14 years ago. Finding no Victorian houses to restore here, he started a landscaping business, Earthtech Unlimited, with his wife, Mary. "I have always had a green thumb, which I inherited from my mother, who is Sicilian," Carufe says. "I still get to build, design and create. I like it because now I work with live wood instead of dead wood."

On the side, he wrote a few freelance articles for Gulfshore Life. He hadn’t considered writing a book until his family—especially his father, Michael—started encouraging him. "My dad, who passed away, unfortunately didn’t [get] to see this book published, but he made me promise I’d write it," Carufe says.

Now, he adds, "I’m actually looking at a copy in my office thinking, ‘Did I really write that?’"