The Falling Circle was my first novel, but I’ve only recently published it. I went through it and cleaned up many of the “first novelist” idiosyncrasies of the work and put it up on Amazon. The Falling Circle is a novel about being down and out in the concrete jungle. Many books address this issue, and they all tell the tales of the hardships of being poor. But I didn’t want to just wax about the struggles of the underclass, I also wanted to emphasize how weird it is to be poor: The bizarre places, the ridiculous people, and the surreal situations that you would never put up with unless you absolutely had to. That’s why I call this work fiction that’s just as strange as life, because it really is!
The Falling Circle is told from a subculture perspective, as Preston navigates the art and music underground of the Punk, Metal, and New Wave scenes. If you were ever part of those scenes this work will resonate with you. If you were never part of those scenes and wonder what it was like, this is also the book for you.
The Clubber is my book about the eighties. When you read it you will be able to smell the Aquanet and clove cigarettes! Andre is an anti-hero type character, someone I wouldn’t like if I met the pre-nervous breakdown version of Andre. It’s an exploration into a man who is utterly obsessed with how he is perceived. Absolutely everything he does is geared towards making an impression and becoming a huge underground success, alongside all of the other punk and dark wave Gods, an artistic scene that shuns the mainstream, but still has its own vibrant culture of celebrity. I had planned to write my drug addiction book Crash Shadow before tackling this project, but once I got started writing an outline and working out a few scenes I just couldn’t stop. It whisked me along and took me to a few places I did not expect. An examination of the inner workings of a fevered character’s mind!
Crash Shadow is the tale of two drug addicts: One who is sinking deeper and deeper into her addiction, and one who is trying to get clean and sober. There are a lot of parallels between being a using addict and a recovering one, and these stories highlight those similarities. I came up with the idea of writing their stories side-by-side, and I found it much easier to do than I had anticipated. Both are a former couple whose paths threaten to intersect at various points throughout the book. I was inspired to write this book, not just because of my experiences and the experiences of many of my friends, but also because there’s so much material out there that just distorts the issues of drug addiction. I try as much as possible to show the drug world as it really is, to make it as plausible as possible. Even without distortions, the drug world is an intense and twisted place. I hope this work really shows that world for what it is.
Crash Shadow is also my longest work. It’s basically two books. So if you want a lighter read and a quicker introduction to my work, check out The Falling Circle or The Clubber first!
Check them out on Amazon. The Kindle copies cost less than a Starbucks Latte’!
Click on the pics to get to their Amazon pages!
