I Will Break Your Heart (Novel - Seeking Representation)

I Will Break Your Heart is for adults who were latch-key kids, ate fro-yo, and wore out their Top Gun soundtrack cassette listening to “Take My Breath Away.”  It’s the YA novel Generation X never got to read.

When Penny, Shannon, and Donnie (all 14) collectively ditch their weekly meeting for “Children of Divorce” and stumble on an abandoned house, they find their safe haven.

Shannon has grown up with therapists telling him he has trouble expressing his feelings. Little does the world know he is set to launch a business, Love Poems Inc., using the seventy-four poems he’s secretly written to his long-standing crush, Penny. Shannon’s first customer is Donnie, who intends to give the poem to Penny so his macho brother will stop thinking he’s gay. Penny swoons. Her bipolar mom is totally wrong. Maybe she was a mistake, but here’s proof that someone finds her loveable. The friendships grow even as their home lives suffer. Penny’s mom is hospitalized, Shannon can never live up to his older, “normal” brother, and Donnie realizes he's not just gay, but also likes wearing his mom’s clothes. When the truth of who wrote the poem comes out, the friendships unravel. At an age when love feels forever and all-consuming, sometimes a broken heart is the best thing that could happen.

No matter which era we grew up in, our romanticized notions of love always let us down but make us stronger. Set in Silicon Valley in 1986, I Will Break Your Heart explores themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and mental illness, and fans of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow will recognize the hazy line between romantic and platonic love. With alternating 1st person POVs, the novel echoes “The Breakfast Club” and features an autistic lead character straight out of “Love on the Spectrum.” It is my debut novel at 72,000 words and would resonate with YA readers of all ages.

The Inexorables (Novel - Work in Progress)

After their parents disappear in a plane over the ocean, Amerencia (14) and August (9) move to a small town on the California coast with their grandparents. Three years later on the winter solstice, coinciding with their parents’ death, giant glowing dragonflies with wingspans two feet across begin concentrating in an abandoned quarry, once owned a hundred years earlier by the town founder, Alfred Solinas. He too died under mysterious circumstances when he was last seen flying off in a dragonfly-inspired helicopter. Drawn to the quarry where the dragonflies swirl around a pool inside a cavern, the kids learn the insects are not of this world and their parents were part of a research group dedicated to seeking out the impossible place they come from. Borrowing from the earlier experiments of Alfred Solinas, both aerodynamic and psychedelic, the parents’ quest to find the entry point for these interstellar visitors came with consequences that reverberate three years later and touch upon our notions of free will, the origins of creativity, and the transcendent ties of family.

Short Stories

Fabulously Fairview - a group of neighbors start a text thread and lose their minds over an abandoned car that sits on their street for several months.

Trim Pubes (Shave Balls?) - Disillusioned dad visits a sex worker for the first time and can’t even get that right. A humorous take on middle age, queerness, marriage, and failed masculinity.