Joe Belcastro | From Journalism to WWE to Publishing His First Novel
The author of the Dominature trilogy discusses his journey in creative writing and the risks he's taken in his career.
Back in 2012, Joe Belcastro was a Tampa Bay, Florida-based journalist and syndicated film critic for a variety of websites including Crave Online, Examiner.com, and CBS. During his time with Crave Online, Belcastro wrote a piece about how there should be an epic fantasy story that revolves around a battle with God and the Devil. While many television shows and movies such as the Christopher Walken-starring franchise, “The Prophecy,” have offered little hints of what he envisioned here and there, none have truly fleshed out in the way he wanted to see it happen.
Flash forward to 2022, 10 years after the article was published, and Belcastro was finally able to put his vision to paper with his first novel, “Dominature,” with the provocative subtitle “What if the Devil Banished God from Heaven?”. That phrase turned some heads during the promotional tour, especially in a place like Jackson, Mississippi, where Belcastro said he had some very strong reactions.
“I had the threats of a lifetime there. One woman just hated me; this older woman just thought I was the devil himself. She said it in a polite way, though, but she laid into me.”
Despite the backlash, Belcastro added, his book did sell out during the promotional stop in Jackson. Other places have had reactions that weren’t quite as strong.
“Others have been fine; they’ve just been very confused. One dude prayed for me at my table in the middle of a Comic Con. There was a prayer group outside of my hometown library, and I’m like, ‘Why are they here?’ Someone was like, ‘For you.’ And I was like, ‘What the hell did I do?’”
His journalism and film criticism career, which began in 2009, was where his professional writing skills started to develop and he got to learn more about the industry, when things were altering pretty rapidly.
“It was right on the change of newspaper prints starting to decline, but this online citizen journalism stuff started to pick up – and you could actually make money on it if you hustled enough.”
By 2013, he had left the world of journalism and film criticism to pursue his lifelong dream job of being with the WWE. In a separate article he wrote for Crave Online that year, Belcastro discussed what his vision was for a Vince McMahon biopic. Simultaneously, a contact he had in New York City had met an HR representative from WWE, and that person referenced Belcastro. It was shortly after both instances that Belcastro got the call to join the WWE.
“I think that’s how my name kind of got on there, or maybe they just had a file on me that I applied 800 times and they finally said, ‘Oh, we’ll give this guy a chance.’ I don’t really know the full story to tell you the truth.”
Professional wrestling was something that Belcastro always loved from a young age. There was a time during high school where he paused on watching wrestling, but he wasn’t sure why. Belcastro fell back in love with the sport again in college when stars of that era, such as The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, were becoming more well-known in the mainstream. And it was also around that time he saw something in the sport that he hadn’t before.
“I started noticing the storyline aspect. For a while, wrestling was just about big, over-the-top personalities fighting and it was just about matches in physical combat. Then they started doing a storyline, so it kind of became like a male soap opera, and I just gravitated toward that.”
While attending Niagra University in New York, Belcastro and his friends created their own wrestling television show that aired on the campus’ public access community channel. It was mainly for their own entertainment, with having random items such as garden hoses and floor pillars as their weapons, and a study lounge as their arena. Even though this took place on Tuesdays at 2:00AM, other students started noticing and took interest in it.
“People were sneaking down to watch our stupid asses do this. We were actually drawing a crowd. I literally have scripts right behind me in a folder where this all kind of started for me.”
During his seven-year tenure with the WWE, Belcastro worked his way up from being a writer for the WWE to a lead writer and producer to eventually becoming a co-showrunner and the Vice President of Television Creative. But another opportunity was calling him – and that was becoming a novelist. Despite having years of creative writing experience under his belt, this new career path was one Belcastro said he never anticipated.
“Yes, I’m a storyteller and, yes, I can get into writing. I like it; it’s not torturous to me like it is for a lot of other people. But the novel thing was just simply, I had this idea, and I was like, ‘I can take that idea and put it into an urban fantasy novel.’ And it was strong enough in me, or it was just that creative, artsy side of me. It was just like, ‘I have to go do this. I have the energy to do it. I feel like I’m at my peak storytelling prowess.’”
With this new opportunity on the horizon, Belcastro knew he had to do something he never thought would happen: he would have to leave his dream job.
“WWE helped me refine how to tell a story, how to visualize and all that, and I wanted to apply that to a novel, and I would have regretted if I waited longer. I loved where I was in the company. Everything was great. I could have probably retired sooner than most if I stuck with it for a little while longer. But it was just like, ‘Now is the time to jump. You had this idea for a reason; you felt confident enough.’ And I am not afraid to take risks. I’m not expecting another big success out of this. I’m going for it, and I’m putting the work in.”
Belcastro says his advice for others who are maybe experiencing what he did is to not be afraid and to make sure you are fully prepared before taking on a new endeavor that is outside of your dream job.
“You just have to trust your instincts. It’s one of the themes I actually discussed in my book. We all have it in different areas of life, and we ignore it half the time. Even if something’s going great, if you have another drive, just go about it the right way. In this case with WWE, I had three months notice and I made sure my team was ready to handle this without me.”
Belcastro’s departure from the WWE came right at the height of the 2020 COVID pandemic, when lockdowns and mandates were intact and large gatherings were prohibited. But during that time, WWE was still producing shows regularly with modifications – such as not having fans in the arena. Belcastro’s job was stable despite the changes taking place in the company and worldwide. Yet, even with everything going on, Belcastro still made the decision to leave to pursue his new career.
“It was a calculated risk; it still is a risk. Yes, the pandemic was going on, but whether there was a pandemic or not, it would have been the same decision and it would have also been the same how I would have went about it. I literally just stopped, and eight days later, I started writing chapter one. The world atmosphere didn’t really affect me, and what was happening never really played into my decision either.”
The book, which released in 2022, is the first in a trilogy that is set to conclude in 2024. Spinning off from that original 2012 article, it takes an epic-like approach to telling a story that involves two divine creators, Adonai and Helel, and a disagreement that leads to one banishing the other from the shared realm in which they reside known as Alegion. Now forever cast to the planet of Eden, it’ll take some strong conviction to bring the two back together for one final battle.
“You’ve never had that epic ‘Lord of the Rings’ type saga with the God and devil characters. So, I’m like, ‘Hey, if I can come up with my own version of God and the devil, apply my love for alt history,’ because I love reading those stories or seeing those movies that do the alt history slant. And then I thought of the dynamic what if the devil actually won? And then what if the devil banished God from Heaven? And it just flowed out of me.”
One of the big inspirations for Belcastro in the way he approached telling this story was doing so in the way of one of his favorite filmmakers, Christopher Nolan.
“He’s amazing to me. He takes a story where he knows it’s going to be difficult to tell. You need to be thinking about it if you’re watching it, so he has to be mindful of that. He doesn’t just give you fluff, which is fine; people make a lot of money off giving something the majority of the viewing audience can digest and understand and want more. He’s never like that.”
Belcastro also wanted to try to follow Nolan’s approach to the Dark Knight trilogy in grounding his characters and making them more physically present, where the two divine beings take human form on Earth – or, in the case of the book, Eden.
“If I’m having divine beings that are more intelligent, they can’t talk like you and I or the human characters in the book. It just didn’t make sense to me. That was the only trick; it was like, ‘How am I going to do that? What am I going to do?’ And it’s like, ‘Keep it simple.’ I talk about their size a little bit. It’s not like they’re giants, but they are noticeably [taller].”
While the book is based more in the epic fantasy genre, Belcastro does weave in some social commentary about today’s influencer culture and his experiences from living in Florida. Being a novelist is a new route for him, so he also wanted to incorporate whatever else came to mind that would fit with the story.
“I wanted to bring that visual experience that I loved in TV shows, like the hour-long HBO dramas or stuff in movies and be like, ‘Can I still do it in novel form and still embrace the novel style that we’re supposed to stay in?’ Which I’ve never done before, and I’m not saying I know how to do it. I’m sure the great authors of the world might rip me apart, but that’s fine. You just have to break the mold a little bit. But I also try to keep the traditional sense of what it was supposed to be, so I did learn and study on how to make things flow.”
With the second book, “Blood of Cryden,” having been released in July of this year, and the final entry releasing in 2024, Belcastro plans to work more on mastering the marketing side of book publishing and figuring out which route he wants to take next. The “Dominature” trilogy is all self-published, and during his first book tour, Belcastro had the opportunity to meet other authors who have taken the same approach and have been successful in their careers, such as Shayne Silvers, Jonathan Yanez, and Orlando Sanchez.
“They were kind enough to give me a little bit of a shortcut and [feedback] on, ‘Here’s what you’re doing right, and here’s what you can improve on.’ Writing is the easy part for me at least, but the other stuff, it’s a lot to take on your own and you could really use a team. Right now, it’s like, ‘OK, I set out to write a trilogy. I’m going to finish the trilogy.’”
But Belcastro still has the vision of making everything work out in the end.
“I’m of the mindset that I was able to achieve a dream, and I might be getting greedy trying to go after another, but I am not going to be shattered if this doesn’t work. I want it to work. I’m going to make sure I’m prepared to make it work.”
Belcastro’s book has drawn comparisons to Neil Gaiman, especially “Good Omens.” But he notes that he tries to avoid watching or reading anything that might even be close to what he has in mind for his trilogy until he has officially completed it.
“All of those shows are probably right up my alley like ‘Good Omens’ and ‘Lucifer.’ There’s a movie called ‘The Devil Conspiracy,’ which freaked me out for a minute, because I saw the trailer and was like, ‘That feels like something I wrote in my book. Did I do something that was already out there?’ But I’ve been told I haven’t.”
If one were to peruse Belcastro’s website, they may notice his biography mentions how, despite not having much experience prior to tackling his roles in journalism and the WWE, he was still able to be successful in both areas. It helped that he never gave up on pursuing those goals he had set for himself, and he surrounded himself with other like-minded individuals.
“If you want something, just always be prepared for it and don’t fall into the mindset of there’s only one way to do this. One thing I’ve seen from people, when you’re in a spot like WWE, you’re around a lot of people that also get to live their dream. Everyone has their own unique path to their dream. So, the only thing I would say from experience is, have the dream but just keep your eyes open because there’s always a way to maybe get to it. Even if you take a common path that everyone says this is how you do it – that’s just not true all the time.”
Belcastro attributes a lot of his success to his work ethic and treating everything with importance and figuring out what the next step is to get ahead. That’s how he was able to go from working for numerous websites as a journalist, where he published a wide variety of articles, reviews, and celebrity interviews, to then working for the WWE and now being a novelist.
“I was a journalist all the way until I started my first day with WWE, and then the same thing – that work ethic was next level. I was pushed harder than I ever was, and I kept that. I’ve not stopped my work ethic. Since I’m in a risk, in my mind, I’m pretending like I’m broke again. The work ethic is the biggest thing I’ve kept, and it’s easy when you’re passionate about something.”
The first two books in the “Dominature” series are now available to purchase on Amazon and other locations where books are sold. To learn more about Joe Belcastro, be sure to visit his official website.