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. A global 1st edition is now available.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:
90% of all new work on this space (all posts older than 1 month are paywalled)
Tune into Substack Live for the Paris Writers’ Salon (generally every other Sunday at 6pm CET / 12pm EST)
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:
Recordings of the semi-weekly Paris Writers’ Salon
A digital copy of my debut novel, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015)
Full access to the Archive (paywalled after 1 month)
Exclusive access to paywalled work, especially 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.
