Lab Owner Publishes Novel, Fulfills Lifelong Passion

Ever since he was young, Steven Pigliacelli, CDT, MDT, wanted to be a novelist. Inspired by Fantasy authors like JRR Tolkien and Edgar Rice Burroughs, he would create stories in his head but never put them down on paper. Then life took him in a different direction: When he was 16, his brother-in-law Lenny Marotta invited him to work in his dental lab, Marotta Dental Studio in Farmingdale, NY, and—fast forward nearly 45 years—he now runs the 50-employee operation alongside his nephew, Josh Marotta.

While Pigliacelli was a career technician and educator (he’s also an Adjunct Instructor of Prosthodontics at NYU), being a novelist has never been far from his mind. With retirement on the horizon, he realized he needed a hobby and decided to finally give writing a shot—he even had an idea for a novel. “I knew how the story was going to start and end but I had to fill in all the rest, which was the hard part,” says Pigliacelli who...