About Steve

Steve Physioc is an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and acclaimed fiction author whose storytelling career spans nearly five decades. Best known for his 35-year tenure as a Major League Baseball play-by-play announcer, Physioc lent his voice to the Kansas City Royals, California Angels, San Francisco Giants, and Cincinnati Reds, as well as the NFL, NBA, and NCAA games on ESPN, Fox Sports, and TBS. He is widely respected for his ability to bring audiences closer to the action with vivid, emotionally resonant commentary.

Since retiring from broadcasting in 2022, Steve has devoted himself to writing fiction full-time. His work has won the Grand Prize in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, a BookLife Editors’ Pick, earned Gold Medals for Best Historical Fiction from Readers’ Favorite and Reader Views. Steve lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife, Stace, and enjoys spending time with their children and grandchildren, surrounded by the mountains that now inspire his stories.

Steve and his wife, Stace, the inspiration for Isabella in his novels The Walls of Lucca and Above the Walls. — Steve and his wife, Stace, the inspiration for Isabella in his novels *The Walls of Lucca* and *Above the Walls*.

STEVE’S WRITING JOURNEY (IN HIS WORDS)

While my wife and I were vacationing in Italy in 2006, we were staying in a charming bed and breakfast in the Province of Grosetto. I had a vivid dream one night of a great walled city. Usually, I go back to sleep, but on this occasion, I went to the bathroom, turned on the light and wrote down what I saw in the dream. The next day, while touring local villages I told Stace about my dream and she was intrigued. One week later we arrived in Lucca and I exclaimed, "This is it! This is the walled city I dreamt about!"

I started researching Lucca's history, the roots of which go back all the way to 180 BC when the town became a Roman colony. Lucca became prosperous through banking and the silk trade and consequently wanted to protect their wealth. They built fortifications over 2000 years; pre-Christian walls, medieval walls, and the beautiful renaissance walls that now ring the city for 4.2 kilometers. What I found fascinating was that in over two millennia of Lucca's history, their ramparts were never militarily tested. No one ever attacked Lucca.

I thought about the deeper message about how we humans often build emotional walls to protect us from some perceived threat and how doubts, fears, worries, keep us from realizing our own divine potential. And the story began.