For Frank Pasquine, the appeal of New York City was hard to resist.
“I remember as a kid, my parents would take me to the Rockettes during Christmas time, take me to Rockefeller [Center]…,” he reminisced about seeing the iconic Christmas tree. “I was probably 10 and I was like, ‘I gotta be here.’
“I saw the energy and I saw the vibes.”
Pasquine grew up in the township and is a 2002 graduate of its high school. At 18, he moved to New York City to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He took film, television and writing classes. Creative writing was a focus.
“It was a big culture shock to me,” he admitted of transitioning from South Jersey to the Big Apple. “There were very wealthy well-to-do private school kids and then me thrown in the mix. I always kind of carried that with me. I got to know a lot of people like this coming from wealthy backgrounds and from the Upper East Side.
“Some of my best friends are now from the Upper East Side, which is again a completely different world than I was used to.”
During his senior year at NYU, Pasquine wrote and developed a TV pilot in one of his classes.
“At the time, (“The O.C.”) was a big show about kids in Orange County (California),” he explained, noting he enjoyed the series similar to “Beverly Hills 90210.”
Pasquine decided to put his own perspective into his pilot.
“I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I come in kind of the guy thrown in the mix,” he recalled.
And that’s what Pasquine did. He graduated, moved to Los Angeles and pitched his pilot, which drew a lot of interest.
However unbeknownst to him at the time, a similar kind of pilot was already in development with Warner Brothers called “Gossip Girl.”
So Pasquine – now a full-time marketing director in Manhattan – put his pilot on the back burner. That was about 20 years ago. Last March, he decided to focus on writing and finish what he started.
Pasquine took his original pilot idea from 20 years ago and made it into a young adult novel, “The Prince of New York.” He aligned his ideas with the classic story of Hamlet and built upon it to make it his own.
“I wanted to make it into a book that could actually be a series and for potentially on screen,” he said.
In his debut novel, “The Prince of New York,” Pasquine tells the story of David Whitmore, the teenage heir to one of the most powerful families in Manhattan, a young man raised on the Upper East Side who begins to uncover the darker truths behind his family’s empire.
His unexpected relationship with a girl from the Bronx draws him into a dangerous web of family secrets and betrayal hidden beneath New York’s glittering elite.
With his debut novel, Pasquine is starting back at his roots. His parents and sister still live in the township.
In addition to stores around New York City, he is working on getting donated copies of the book to the Margaret E. Heggan Free Public Library, as well as local bookstores around the area. “The Prince of New York” can also be found on Amazon.
On his acknowledgement page, Pasquine writes: “To everyone who believes in telling stories even when the gatekeepers say no. This book exists because I refused to give up on it. Every writer faces moments where the silence is louder than the encouragement, but the only way a story dies is if you stop telling it.
“So to anyone out there still pushing forward – keep going.”
