Michael X. Ferraro has gotten paid to come up with nicknames for Shaquille O'Neal, to write sports rants for Dennis Miller, and to generate outrageous tabloid fodder for the Weekly World News, among other, much crappier jobs.His new novel, CIRCUS CATCH (Vanilla Thunder Press) is a hard-hitting satire set in the world of professional football. It will make you laugh, make you think, and if you're a sports fan from Cleveland, will probably make you cry.As you may recall, Ferraro's print career began at age 12 when he self-published a sports-comedy 'zine called "Sportstuff" (with the indispensable help of his mom's work Xerox). He was written for all the major networks, created a TV pilot for Nick at Nite, and contributed to publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Weekly World News and Written By magazine. He has worked closely with a broad range of TV personalities, among them Shaquille O'Neal, Howie Mandel, Scott Hamilton, Michael Irvin, Michael Flatley, Dennis Miller, Joe Rogan, Gordon Ramsay and Henry Winkler.The author of "Numbelievable," co-authored with friend and colleague John Veneziano, he has also published the wildly niche baseball poetry collection "TASED & AMUSED: The Shocking Poetic Recap of the 2010 Baseball Season," and is a regular contributor the world's preeminent baseball poetry website, bardball.com. He is currently working on books about the messiest kid ever, the art of songwriting, and and another sports comedy entry.He resides in the Eagle Rock section of town with his glorious wife, two rabid step-weasel sons, Owen & Wyatt, and cats named Hopper, Henry and Lightning.