By Matt Skoufalos
At the outset of his college education, Cleveland native Tony Marini was primed for a career in dentistry. However, upon arriving at Cleveland State University, Marini was so moved to follow his passions as a writer that he ended up completing a degree in journalism and creative writing instead.
After graduation, however, Marini’s work in the field of advertising revealed itself to be much less fulfilling than he had originally anticipated. A friend who worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer encouraged him to return to school to study medicine, the better to position himself for a career in medical or technical writing. So, at 27, Marini left the ad world and enrolled in the nuclear medicine program at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio.
Although he’d intended to leverage that education into a different writing career, early exposure to patient care during his clinical studies taught Marini first-hand how much joy and fulfillment there was to be found in that work. A year later, he graduated, and went right to work at Lakewood Hospital, a community hospital in Lakewood, Ohio as a nuclear medicine technologist. He’s never looked back since.
“It is really very rewarding,” Marini said. “I still am a staff technologist. I still love being a staff technologist. I love doing patient care. It’s a good feeling to be able to provide a service to the community; I really do enjoy it.”
After 10 years at Lakewood Hospital, Marini was recruited by a friend to join the team at UH Parma Medical Center in Parma, Ohio, where he’s logged another 23 years as a nuclear medicine technologist. He still enjoys patient care, and still enjoys writing: throughout his imaging career, Marini has maintained freelance work covering fitness, wellness, and physical and mental health topics for various media outlets.
All along, however, Marini had always harbored a desire to write a children’s book, but he couldn’t quite pin down the subject until one year, it appeared, unprompted, at a holiday gathering.
“I used to read ‘‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ to some friends of mine on Christmas Eve,” he said. “On the back of the book was a little blurb about the Christmas pickle; the ornament that you put on the tree. A friend of mine was like, ‘Tony, that’s your book!’ ”
The legend of the Christmas pickle is a convoluted one; some researchers trace its lineage to Germany or Poland; others say it’s a story that has been reverse-engineered from the American experience of Christmas. As a practical matter, it plays out like this: someone hides a pickle-shaped ornament among the boughs of the family Christmas tree, and whomever spots it first is believed to get good luck throughout the coming year (and sometimes, an extra gift). The challenge comes from picking out the green ornament against the backdrop of the green tree.
For Marini’s story, he embraced the malleability of the Christmas pickle lore to craft “Pennie the Christmas Pickle,” a tale tinged with traces of Hans Christian Andersen’s storytelling. It centers on a young girl “who wants to do something great in life,” he said. 
“She struggles to find what that would be, and her siblings make fun of her along the way, but she believes in herself,” Marini said.
By the end of the book, Santa Claus uses his Christmas magic to turn Pennie into the proverbial and enduring Christmas pickle. Marini filled out the remainder of the book with a package of activities for children, and lush, full-color illustrations from visual artist Tom Fox of Buffalo, New York. The two collaborated remotely on the project, which Marini self-published, and which he has been promoting through public and community events.
“Book writing is like one percent; the rest is marketing,” he said. “I go to libraries and schools and read to children. It does take a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding. There is nothing more enlightening than seeing children light up when you read the book. It’s so much fun.”
Now Marini is hard at work on a second children’s holiday novel, “Trotter the Thankful Turkey.” He’s again working with Fox on the illustrations for a book that will tell the story of how Trotter transforms from a self-interested bird into a neighbor who learns to embrace the love of his community.
“A huge storm comes through town, and all his feathers get blown away,” Marini said. “So everyone in the community comes together to clothe him and give him feathers, and he then becomes a very humble turkey.”
As he comes close to readying Trotter for publication, Marini is again winding up the mechanisms of promoting the work: pitching libraries, schools and bookstores; listing the title on Amazon.com, and providing copies for local gift shops. For as much work as it’s been, the lead-up to releasing his second title “feels pretty incredible,” Marini said.
“It’s almost like giving birth to a child,” he said. “This is real. And [collaborating with Fox is] exciting because, in your brain, you might have one type of vision of what you think it’s going to be, and the artist comes up with something much better than you thought.”
Neither is Marini completely wrapped with “Pennie the Christmas Pickle.” Currently, he’s penning an adaptation for the stage with his friend, Julie Gilliland, in parallel to preparing for the launch of “Trotter the Thankful Turkey.”
“I still have that bug for writing,” he said. “You never get rid of it; when you’re a writer, it’s hard to give it up. But I would like to continue to do more children’s books. It hasn’t completely got off the ground yet because of my schedule, but we are about halfway through getting it done.”
When he’s not behind the writer’s desk, Marini can be found in his garden, cultivating organic crops for his home dinner table, or at the patient bedside, helping people navigate through the anxiety of their appointment. Gardening brings him a meditative, contemplative peace, while writing feeds his need for creative expression; both are instrumental to his enjoyment of life.
“That’s one thing you learn about working in a hospital,” Marini said; “you’ve got to enjoy life.” •
For more information about “Pennie the Christmas Pickle,” visit penniepickle.com.
