The Hummingbird’s Sayang
Status: Published January 18, 2022
He’s the Arab heir to a multi-million-dollar global corporation. She’s a hopelessly shy, iron-willed computer science nerd who grew up in the Midwest. As fate would have it, they land in the same programming class. And then he ghosts her – for a year and a half. So, what could she do, but fall in love with a 27-year-old Vietnamese car salesman instead? That is … until he promises her a white picket fence and forgets to mention the Peet’s barista fondling his coffee beans on the weekend.
Cue the soul-crushing agony of first love. And who should swoop into her match pile of rebounds, but her black-eyed Arab Dom from Dubai?
The euphoria of his touch sets her free, but his aloofness towards the women of his ‘harem’ flings her on a downward spiral toward obsession. She chases the love he refuses to give, falling instead into the arms of others.
But … how far will the lines of identity and misidentity blur in the face of all-consuming obsession for one man?
“The Hummingbird’s Sayang” is an evocative examination of our obsession with temptations of the flesh – inspired by a true story.
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Broken Pancakes
Status: Complete but unpublished, as of February, 2020
Matty knew from an early age that he liked skateboarding, physics, and playing videogames. He also knew he liked boys.
But when Matty’s bitter, prejudiced grandfather moved in, Matty realized he would have to hide himself away and conform to the oppressive will of his family. Now, Matty walks the halls of Brentwood High with only one goal: to remain invisible, waiting for the day he can escape the life he’s living.
Jett lives to help people. He’s the guy who helps you up when you trip in the hallway, takes in a friend when their parents kick them out for the umpteenth time, and spends his free time on the top floor of the town’s tallest parking garage, lamenting the suicide of a boy he never knew. Jett is willing to sacrifice every part of himself to help those in need with the simple rationale that the only thing worth caring about in this world is other people.
Enthralled with their polar personalities, the boys embark on a whirlwind relationship rife with gorilla clouds, jumping spiders, and burnt pancakes.
But when Jett and Matty witness a sexual assault, the boys find themselves at odds. While Jett urges Matty to report what they’ve seen to the school, Matty lets his fear of discovery keep him from saving the girl. With Jett’s guilt spiraling out of control, the girl’s fate hanging in the balance, and Matty’s past returning to haunt him, Matty is left floundering for a way to reconcile the convulsions in his hand, the guilt in his gut, and the love in his heart.
Beneath Perseus, January’s Dandelion Grows
Status: Complete but unpublished, as of February, 2020
Sara’s a genius. She’s also a high school dropout. She’s got her nose to the grindstone and the Ivy Leagues in her sights. Not a day goes by that she isn’t whipping through another textbook, coaching herself for college interviews, and obsessing over the love of her life. He’s dead. Correction: he’s dead to her. If anyone asks, she’ll call him a slimy, dim-witted praying mantis not even worthy of having been her archnemesis. In reality, all she wants is to piece together his disappearance from her life.
In rides January, the shiny new girl on the block. Spawn of the Chicago suburbs, with fettucine strips down her back and a heart of steel, she’s one enigma that Sara can’t solve. Uprooted from her lonely little existence, Sara is caught up in the beautiful, full-of-life, perilous landscape of January’s snowstorm – a place where the past unravels, the future comes into question, and desires come out to play. In Beneath Perseus, January’s Dandelion Grows, Sara must decide which matters most: mysteries of the past, aspirations for the future, or love in the present.
Tye the Weed Guy
Status: Complete but unpublished, as of February, 2020
A year ago, my neighbors were bible-bangers, there were a total of two gay kids in a twenty-mile radius, and I thought Mary Jane was the name of that sweet, old lady a few doors down.
Jump to three months later, when I find myself living with the world’s most endearing drug dealer, being courted by a Turkish programmer with a harem of girls, getting second-hand high off of my roommate’s insatiable weed addiction, and wooing a gorgeous, British dancer with a higher IQ than my entire family, combined. Add to that being a small-town Midwesterner dumped into Los Angeles, the sunshine and high-time capital of the world, falling in unrequited love with an Overwatch-obsessed engineer, and coming out.
What in the world happened?
Ah, yes. College.
The Blood Dripped Stone
Status: Complete but unpublished, as of February, 2020
Nuclear annihilation at the hands of Cimmerian Path, a terrorist organization, wreaks worldwide havoc in The Blood Dripped Stone, a darkly humorous post-apocalyptic novel. Protagonists Niki, an eleven-year-old farmer’s daughter, and James, an egotistical Department of Defense engineer, find themselves thrust into the world of the Vault, an underground government bunker.
Ten years after the fallout, Niki uncovers the bunker’s cryotube warehouse, tumbling into a web of lies and deceit, chief among them President Frank’s motives for keeping the Vault’s residents from returning to the surface and rebuilding civilization. Navigating a potential relationship with reclusive, mysterious doctor Ian, Niki must unearth the reality of her parents’ deaths during the fallout and the harrowing truth surrounding Frank’s plans for the future, before the fate of the Vault’s inhabitants is put in jeopardy.
James, the inadvertently humorous antihero with a cowardly streak, struggles with the realization that he unwittingly let slip defense secrets allowing Alice, the love of his life and secret Cimmerian Path agent, to help orchestrate worldwide genocide. Although the real Alice disappeared during the fallout, a metaphysical version of Alice, only visible to James, continues to plague and pleasure his waking hours. James must reconcile his love for a mass-murderer while fighting to keep secret his part in the fallout, a difficult task, when ghosts come knocking on his door.
