Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

ZEKE

Powelton Village, Philadelphia | July, 2000

This turns out to be remarkably easy. Marcus comes over to my apartment the next day, and we find her within I want to say twelve minutes. Leah’s website doesn’t give a phone number, but the white pages do. There are only two Schaudts in the greater Philadelphia area, Barry R. and Josephine M. We try Barry first (my number blocked of course, Marcus and I huddling over my cell phone, on speaker) and she actually answers the call.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

ZEKE

Powelton Village, Philadelphia | June, 2000

Come on, Todd. Pick up, motherfucker.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

BALERO

Society Hill, Philadelphia | June, 2000

So the book club. Finally going. I get off the bus and find my way to the appointed corner at the appointed time and find a hardy Daryl, he of the acne and the long black ponytail, just parking his car. He’s flanked by two breathless young beauties. This makes him look like a programmer or a rock god, because otherwise how could he ever…

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

BALERO

Spruce Hill, Philadelphia | June, 2000

That Saturday afternoon at the convention center was enough to knock us out of our usual orbit and send us off to smoke our own stashes in private. No more Stoner Paradise adventures. This isn’t anything new, but it usually happens during the school year when academia presses down on Marcus like invisible furniture. I don’t know. Something changed in him that day. He became surlier than even I sometimes get, which is saying something. I decide to hang back and let him come around, which he does, and it’s nasty.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

MARCUS

Powelton Village, Philadelphia | June, 2000

Zeke buzzes me in. He lives alone, thank Christ. I lurk beneath a parade of throbbing orange lights until I reach his door, which I bang on hard enough to jiggle off the little number under the peephole. It’s never occurred to me that the orange lights in the hallway look like ’50s flying saucers.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

BALERO

Downtown Philadelphia | June, 2000

It was a dry spell from hell. Never seen anything like it. The holy grail of friendly, stocked dealers who promptly returned their pages and weren’t crazy were suddenly impossible to find. In desperate times wishes for dealers both friendly and prompt were abandoned in favor of those who lived nearby and didn’t own a large gun collection and perhaps did fail to take their medication, but even these fleeting ghosts were not to be found throughout the dark months of April and May.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

LEAH

Northwest Philadelphia | July, 1999

The long walks started in June. I was sick of sitting around at home, pretending to read or staring at the cat. I’d disappear behind the wall of trees across the street from our house almost daily, losing myself for hours. Dad asked about this over dinner one night, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Where was I off to? Just getting some exercise? Yes, that was it. Not that it was a secret.

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Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

(PART ONE)

ZEKE

Rosedale, MD | September, 1998

Cory’s coded message brings me to a cinderblock apartment on the edge of a Baltimore suburb. I dial 011 for the Miller birthday party. Arrows on signs guide me through a pale maze to a long low room where balloons gather in corners and look down on people in various states of milling under lights turned up too high.

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