Buy My Memoir! $3.99!

NYC, COVID, Violence

My New Book is Out, a “Fictional Memoir” about NYC during Covid!! ($3.99 eBook/Kindle!)

“Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID”

Buy the book HERE.

Many of you have read some portion of my “fictional memoir” (which just means it’s 98% memoir but I shifted things around slightly in some small ways, changed real names, made a few small things up, etc), Two Years in New York, now fully retitled, Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID.

For those of you who haven’t, click HERE to read the prologue for free. And now the whole book is available on Amazon (CLICK HERE) via eBook/Kindle for $3.99. Paperback coming soon!

Here’s the basic premise. In the spring of 2019, after a painful breakup, at the age of 36 (which now somehow seems impossibly young to me, as if I lived at that time on a different planet from the one I currently occupy), I left my house in the Bay Area, rented it out, and headed to my dream city, Manhattan. Growing up obsessed with the 20th century classics—which my author mother foisted joyfully upon me—I had always been enamored with The Big Apple. It was, after all, the Grand American Mecca of Letters, of writing, of literature. Everyone from Norman Mailer to John Cheever to Susan Sontag to Joan Didion to John Updike and so many others had lived there. Even Nabokov and John Steinbeck had stints there.

And so, single again after four-and-a-half years, still in my mid-thirties, a published short story writer but with still no published novel to show (now I have a published novel as well, THE CREW) I headed east with my Tuxedo cat who was, for all intents and purposes, my son.

New York turned into a spectacular, beautiful and also horrifying disaster. I had one year—spring 2019 to spring 2020—of dating a fascinating, romantic painter, of exploring the city, of meeting artists and authors, of participating in a prominent writing group, of living in Air BnBs in Lower East Harlem, Washington Heights, Upper East Harlem (130th and 5th Ave) before COVID-19 descended upon New York City (and the globe) like a black, menacing curtain. I cannot explain to you that initial fear in mid-March, 2020, living in Manhattan, in Harlem, few friends and all family 3,000 miles away.

But that was only the beginning. My area of East Harlem quickly descended into chaos and violence. I was determined to stick it out. I did for as long as I could but by June, 2020, I’d broken my lease after two men broke into my apartment building and held a tenant up at gunpoint (and after I’d been literally chased twice by mobs of early twenties locals). It was an incredibly strange and unique time to be in New York. Once in a century kind of thing.

Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID is the story of spiritual seeking, a young-ish driven writer trying to find his soul in the gritty, romantic New York of his imagination. It’s the story of a complex, powerful friendship and romantic entanglement with a painter-artist who seemed to embody everything he hoped Manhattan might be. It’s about the exploration of one of the most powerful and notorious cities in the world. It’s about surviving during one of the weirdest periods in American modern history.

What got me to New York was drive, ambition, spiritual need. What forced me to leave, after 2.3 years, in July of 2021, was my father’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

This is my story. It’s a short, fast read. I hope you consider buying it. Only $3.99. Please spread the word, share this post, and leave reviews on Amazon!!!

Again, HERE’S A LINK TO THE BOOK

And if you’re interested in reading my novel, The Crew (all formats available), CLICK HERE.

Common Misconceptions about Writing: Things We’ve been Told that Aren’t Necessarily [Always] True about The Craft

1.    The ole saw, “Show Don’t Tell.”

Every writer—new and seasoned, young and old—has heard this one. It’s industry shorthand for: Use action scenes versus explanation or summary. In other words: Show characters acting, doing things, being in conflict, pushing against self and other, engaging in internal and external tension, arguing, disagreeing, fighting, clashing, etc. In general, this is a good rule. *(My novel The Crew, is probably 85% action scenes.)

However, the truth is it depends on what kind of writing you’re engaged in. If you’re writing action-packed suspense or thriller in the vein of, say, John Grisham or James Patterson or Stephen King, then yes, it’s all about plot and action, scenes and riveting dialogue.

But if you’re writing—dare I say it and sound overtly pretentious and ostentatious—“serious literary fiction” (aka “literature”) then you’re in more complex literary terrain. Read a book such as, say, Paul Auster’s 2023 novel, Baumgartner, or Tom Robbins’ Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, or Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom or The Corrections or Zadie Smith’s Swing Time or Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room or more or less anything by Ottessa Moshfegh, and you’ll see immediately that plot is always trumped, big-time, by character, style, voice, and depth.

If literature can be defined broadly as the search for meaning underneath all phenomena—or the uncovering of what it means to be human—then most solid literary fiction generally focuses more on character and style and meaning than on “plot” per say.

(And of course voice. Nailing your literary voice is perhaps 65% of the battle right there.) Of course this isn’t always the case, and many classic novels have both strong plot and depth/voice/style etc. Consider Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. (Major plot-work mixed with long philosophical asides which last for twenty pages.) So, what I mean to say here is: Editors, writing teachers (a contradiction in terms, in my opinion), MFA programs, and some seasoned authors will say “show don’t tell.” Sure. Often true. But not always. Remember: The best way to become a good writer is by reading often and widely and by writing. Pay attention to what successful novels have already done. Pay more attention to that than to what others may say.

2.    “Kill Your Darlings.”

Yes and no. As a developmental book editor, I admit I’ve said this very thing to many a past client. And it’s often true. But not 100% of the time. “Darlings,” here refer to “purple prose,” aka flowery, glittery, gaudy diction and syntax that makes it sound like you’re trying too hard to sound like a writer, versus just simply writing; doing the damn thing. Darlings are your precious prose you think are genius and which 75% of the time are delete-worthy.

However. Sometimes you get a Michael Chabon, or a Tom Robbins or a Norman Mailer. These are all excellent literary examples of writers who, theoretically, write words and sentences and paragraphs and pages that are filled—ostensibly—with “purple prose,” aka riddled with those grotesque, pesky “darlings.” (Way too many adjectives and adverbs, $100 words galore, etc.)

And yet: We love these authors (at least many of us do). These authors have won Pulitzer Prizes and have changed writing for the better in myriad ways. Yes, most of us will NOT be anything like these genius-giants, and yet, some will have if not the same level of talent, something in the ballfield. Ergo: Yes, as much as I generally love the stripped-down, Hemingway and Carver-obsessed clipped writing, there’s clearly also room for more “darling” writing…if you can make it work. Remember: Writing is filled with rules; first you need to learn those rules and then, if you’re any good, you need to start breaking those rules left and right. Some of our best, most experimental writers did this: Kerouac, Burroughs, Bukowski, etc.

For the full article CLICK HERE

Video-Recorded Conversation Between Me and James F. Richardson, PhD, on The Merits or Lack Thereof of "Individualism"

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FULL VIDEO CONVERSATION (FREE)

Social Scientist and cultural anthropologist James F. Richardson (PhD) and I sat down and had an interesting conversation about the merits or lack thereof of individualism in contemporary America. We first connected when we swapped books: He read my punk-literary YA novel, The Crew (SoCal punk rock late 1990s, think Dead Poet’s Society meets The Basketball Diaries meets The Breakfast Club) and I read his just-coming-out nonfiction book, Our Worst Strength: American Individualism and its Hidden Discontents. After reading my novel—a tale of extreme individualism—Richardson realized my book could have been a long chapter in his book. So we decided to hash things out. Click HERE for James’s Substack, Homo Imaginari.

The talk lasts an hour. We discuss many things, among them: Our books and lives and how they seem connected; Alcoholism and addiction; American culture compared to other cultures; social group dynamics; individuality; the dissolution of The American Family; the loss of Elders; immigration and assimilation; permissive parenting versus traditional parenting; kids and boundaries; social balance and dialectics; social overcorrections; freedom; college and beyond as young adults; hitting an emotional bottom to affect positive change; therapy: Pros and cons; and more.

My Book:

James’s Book:

Bio, James F. Richardson (from his Substack): “I am a Ph.D. cultural anthropologist who has studied American society for twenty years as a market research consultant. I’ve interviewed Americans in 40 different states and has lived all over the country, including New England, the Chicago-to-Madison corridor, Seattle, and Tucson, Arizona. For nearly three years in the late 1990s, I also lived in South India, studying a very different society than our own. Today, I live with my wife, children, and dogs in sunny Tucson, Arizona, where I write nonfiction and consult with a national client base in the consumer packaged goods industry.”