MY BOOK IS OUT!!!!!

After 2 months of writing, another month of editing and countless vacillating over comma placement, my book is finally finished and available for purchase. I am still in the process of sending it to traditional publishing houses, as I am much more fond of physical books than e-books, but in the meantime I decided to self-publish and try to get the word out about my book, and maybe make five or six bucks. 

The book is available on Amazon and Kindle. This does not mean you have to own a kindle to access my words. You can simply download the Kindle app to any of your app-capable devices i.e. Tablet, iPad, smart phone, Nook, Kindle, etc. It can also just be downloaded and read on your computer through Amazon. If you are having trouble accessing it, or are not particularly tech savvy, contact me and I will send you a link. But you shouldn't have any trouble just clicking on the My Book tab. Once again thank you for the love and support. It has only been out 2 days and already I have received countless messages of congratulations and love. 

I have already started work on my second book, so stay sharp, in the upcoming months I will post any updates I have, along with the occasional excerpt. Please help me spread the word about my new book by telling friends, and sharing my links. I don't care about the money near as much as I care about getting my words out there. And with the internet, the amount of influence a book can have is limitless. So if you like it, please share it with your fellow bibliophiles. Grazie.

The Joys of Cinephilia

Writing Update

It has been some time since I have blogged. No, I have not been a victim of writer’s block. Quite the contrary actually, I have been editing and finalizing things for the publication of my first book, I’m Trying Here: A Memoir of love, Loss, and Misadventure.  I am still sending it to publishers, but since the average publisher promises to respond in 2-3 months, I decided to self-publish my work as an e-book on Amazon and Kindle in the meantime. I am simply putting the final touches on the cover, and then it should be available online within the week. Stay tuned on my social media outlets, where I will make more official announcements of release dates and any other pertinent information. Thanks for the love and support for my highly lucrative writing career. Post script: The book will likely be available for 99 cents. So sacrifice one Diet Coke so you can afford my book when it comes out. Grazie.

A few months ago I reached a landmark in my personal history of film watching. I hit 1,000 films viewed. This seemed significant if not trivial, but I was in the middle of finishing my book, so a blog post that would entertain me more than anyone else was put on the backburner. Thirty movies later I have decided to revisit the topic ever so briefly. Let’s first rewind to the moment I decided it was a crucial practice to record every movie I had ever seen. Circa 2001, I am 14 years old and for whatever reason decided that my progeny needed to be privy to the movie titles that had been absorbed throughout my life. I started with all the movies in my house, and then attempted an alphabetical list to help remind me of random movies I had seen over the years. Within a few hours my list grew to several hundred titles. Obviously there are movies from my childhood that I will never remember, but that is okay. Ever since that fateful day, I have not gone to the cinema, rented a Redbox, pirated a movie, or seen a documentary without recording it.

I know what you are thinking. Besides satisfying my own maniacal urges to write down everything that happens in my life, what is the bloody point? To me, the purpose of this practice is threefold. One, as with anything else, the more I write things down, the more I remember them. Ergo, anytime I hear a movie title thrown out there, I am rarely wondering if I have seen it or not. When others are quibbling about which sub-par movie Nicholas Cage was in last year, I am usually able to recall the title, and elicit a warning concerning the terrible plot and mediocre cinematography.

Besides my ability to recall titles and miscellaneous movie trivia, I find it motivates me to watch new movies. Everyone has their favorites, but I learned long ago that there are so many movies out there it is silly to repeatedly watch the same movie over and over again. So when faced with the option of watching Dumb and Dumber or some obscure French film, I am almost always going to side with the subtitled unknown. This is not because I am a Francophile or an especially avid lover of foreign flicks, but rather because it could be a great movie, and whether it is or is not, I will never wonder. And at least I will be able to add it to my list, and perhaps bring it up in a pretentious conversation in the future.

The last reason for my OCD-like list making is my ever increasing cinephilia. I love movies, plain and simple. On more than one occasion I have been to the movie theater three times in one day. A nice matinee and enough popcorn to instantly destroy my health, brings me joy. I love the previews and I love discussing symbolism and parallelisms. I love researching movies after I have seen them to find out how the script came into existence, what actors were originally considered and what anachronisms were committed during filming. Just like my restaurant ritual makes me want to eat out more, writing down each movie I see only makes me want to see more movies.  

Despite my love of avant-garde productions, I am no movie snob. I love chick flicks and have been guilty of enjoying movies from the Oxygen channel. To me the best movies are the movies the make you think, and that tug at your emotions. Below is my current Top-5 Movies Ever List (in no specific order).

1.       High Fidelity

2.       Braveheart

3.       The Shawshank Redemption

4.       Legends of The Fall

5.       When Harry Met Sally

Also, my dear friends…My buddy has created an innovative and sleek new wallet. EZ Wallet is super cheap and a much better way to hold all of your cards and coins without spillage. Check out his Kickstarter, and order one right meow https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2024719686/ez-wallet-a-minimalist-wallet-for-cards-cash-and-c

Quarter Life Crisis

I just finished my manuscript tentatively titled Quarter Life Crisis. It is just over 35,000 words meaning depending on the font and page size will be between 150-200 pages long. Like I have mentioned before I have some pending offers with a couple of Publishing houses, dependent on the reading of the full manuscript. I will keep everyone updated on the progress of the final draft and subsequent publishing details (hopefully). Thanks for all the support and love. Let me know what you think, and tell your pals, geez. Below are a few more excerpts, not necessarily in order; disjointed and random just like I like it. Enjoy. There will be no more samples until the book is published. Be easy.


Excerpt I-

The disquiet I felt came mostly from the fact that I so rarely felt this way about a girl. It was like finding a small diamond on a dirt road, and then misplacing it. Losing the diamond is so distressing because you know how unlikely it is to find another rock so precious. Pebbles and muddied stones were all over, but they lacked any real value and often crumbled with ease. I knew there were other wonderful stones out there, but I knew it would not be easy to find another one.  


Excerpt II-

It was like viewing the Northern Lights; it was beautiful, even breath taking at moments, and for lack of a better word, magical. Alas, it was fleeting and we both were very aware of it. But you don’t watch the Aurora Borealis while discussing its brevity, you enjoy it. You take in the stunning vista and let the auroral colors consume you.



Excerpt III-

 There are myriad forms of kissing, but when it comes to passionate kissing, the kind that gets sloppy and requires extra oxygen, there are two types. They are both likely to produce a good time, but the first is more of a routine sort of recreation; it is fun but nothing special. It is exciting, but just a notch above being platonic. The second form of kissing mirrors the first in every physical aspect, but for some unknown reason it becomes chemical. It becomes much more than a monotonous flinching of facial muscles, and metamorphoses into an unexplainable force of kinetic energy. The Kissing that was had between us was of the latter nature. It’s like out faces were soul mates.

Excerpts Part II- Untitled Manuscript

My book is almost finished. I expect to be finished with the first draft within the next few days. I have heard back from a few publishing houses. One of them offered me a contract, but I would have to front 1,000 bucks for their marketing services. The other company based in London has read my first 3 chapters and has now requested the full manuscript. If they like the rest they will give me a book deal. I still have to go through the arduous editing process, and the task of picking a publisher that will be best for my work. But the end is near, and that is exciting. Below are a few more excerpts to hold you over until the whole thing is published. I still haven't finalized the title, but the memoir will be about my experiences with dating, relationships, being broke, being in that quarter-life crisis stage and all the misadventures and foibles that go along with that. Again note that the following excerpts are not sequential and are more or less random selections. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think. Much love.


Excerpt I-

 Her hair was the color of some dark wood I had never seen before. Her eyes were big and kind. Her body was five-star. But what I couldn’t keep my eyes off of was her face. You hear people talk about natural beauty, and the kind of beauty that makes you look twice. This was a hybrid of the two, with an extra portion of regal appeal. Her nose was hand-crafted by the gods, made with a kind of cartilage this world has never seen. Her skin was a light brown tone, hinting at an ambiguous ethnic background. Her features captivated me to no end. I finally knew how Adam felt when God placed Eve in the garden with him, for it was as if I was seeing the female species for the very first time.

Excerpt II-

 The fantasy swiftly and mercilessly disappeared like a fallen contact lens in a crowded venue. From a distance I watched her laugh and caress his arm following what had to have been a magnificently told anecdote. I stopped staring and chalked it up as a loss. She certainly wasn't the first stunning and unattainable woman I had seen or met in my life.

Excerpt III-

When you break up with someone for good you always secretly hope that they will gain sixty pounds or that their teenage acne will return or perhaps they will lose all their teeth in a horrific dental catastrophe. Unfortunately this rarely happens. They usually look better. They look well-rested, better dressed and perky in all the right places. This makes us fear that the reason they look so good is because now we are gone. They look better because that diseased monkey is off their back. And that is a tough thought to entertain.

Excerpt IV-

I am pretty sure that no one had kissed this well in the history of kissing, be it French or any other nationality. We were two people with a rocky past and a precarious future, but our libidos knew nothing of betrayal or dubious forthcomings. So, we continued this quasi violent barrage of snogging, dismissing anything that dared to approach our minds. It is hard to think about the future when someone is kissing your neck and grabbing your thighs. You can try, but your focus will be invaded and destroyed. We laid on that thin carpet and kissed for hours. We would stop intermittently to look into each other’s eyes and remind ourselves how much we missed each other. It was something out of a young adult novel, it was lunatic love. Of course any utterance of the word love at this time would have sent fatal shock waves through the core of our relationship. 

Excerpt V-

After I had typed every word, checked its grammatical accuracy and vacillated over alternative sentences and adjectives I pressed send. Right after a moment like this, you want and half expect a response within thirty seconds. You forget that the person on the other side of your correspondence might not be clutching their phone awaiting a life-altering text message. They might actually be living their lives. You know this, but you fear that they saw the text and simply decided that responding or even reading it was not a pressing matter. I often bemoan the fact that I did not live in the days where jilted lovers and hopeful romantics sent and received letters. I would kill for a mushy missive full of cursive lettering and flowery confessions. Instead I receive pithy text messages with smiley faces and superfluous letters to emphasize enthusiasm. No one would take the time to write an epistle that only said “yessss, I miss yooou, let’s hang soooon!!!!”