I’ve lived in Paris since 2008 as a novelist and musician. I currently work as a literary tour guide to pay the rent.
I’m interested in how human beings derive meaning in life—through love, intoxication, power, friendship, and the myriad fictions & truths we tell ourselves during the in-between.1
My debut novel, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015), is a coming-of-age story about the pursuit of passion and brotherhood (I’m a twin brother) set in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
My latest novel, The Requisitions (Kingdom Anywhere, 2024) is a historical metafiction set during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. History, memory, and love intertwine in this frame novel story within a story in which a present-day narrator trying to make sense of the past recounts the story of Viktor, a disillusioned academic forced into the Łódź Ghetto, Elsa, a captive Gestapo secretary, and her estranged fiancé, Carl, a troubled policeman whose fixation with the past is pushing him towards unspeakable cruelty.
The limited 1st edition (300 copies) of The Requisitions was independently published in Paris by Kingdom Anywhere, a micro press my wife
and I created in order to retain 100% of the rights to our work. After spending seven years in Slim and The Beast, an indie rock band, I stopped pursuing music professionally to focus on writing full-time.Free subscribers have access to:
All essays & short fiction & about 90% of all new work on this space (all posts older than 1 year are paywalled)
Partial access to an early-Substack-days Parisian novella about romance & intoxication in the City of Lights
Partial access to the beginning of an autobiographical novella about how I fell in love with my wife from across an ocean during a global pandemic
Paid subscribers have full access to:
A copy of The Requisitions (Kingdom Anywhere, 2024)
A monthly virtual lecture/discussion about literature2
A digital copy of my debut novel, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015)
Full access to 2.5 years of Substack writing (the Archive)
Exclusive access to paywalled work, mostly film & piano compositions
Founding Member benefits:
A signed 1st edition of Slim and The Beast + a signed copy of The Requisitions
Standing offer to have a walk around a favorite neighborhood of Paris
why Substack?
Unlike writing novels, this space is about engaging with myself and my readers on a semi-weekly basis in all of the contemporary world’s beauty, imperfection, & vulnerability.
free subscriptions vs. paid
Most of the writing on this space will always remain free. After experiencing the music industry and publishing industry first hand, however, I came to the conclusion that traditional gatekeepers have far too much more than enough power; moreover, since I believe independent art remains valuable in a consumerist society that defines value monetarily, directly paying artists for their work might just be revolutionary.
if you want to know more about who I am, read this:
finally, photographic proof that I’m not a robot:
I hold an MA from University College London in social theory (specifically: how we can use Viktor Frankl’s theory of the will to meaning to understand the humanness of cruelty) and an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
As a former lecturer at the Sorbonne and Context Travel, my interests tend to focus on 20th century anglophone literature in Paris, but each month’s lecture shall be informed by recent work and synchronicity.
