There’s so much I could say about this book, but it’s best served cold. Here’s the description from the back cover:

Alex hears a voice out his window…

He believes it’s his neighbors spying on him. Harassing him.

He struggles to catch them, but they burrow deeper under his skin until he’s convinced his tormentors are controlling him from within.

Alex has no idea how right he is.

Based on the author’s personal experience with auditory hallucinations, I Hear You Watching is a relentlessly interior psychological suspense novel about the abyss gazing back.

It’s my most vulnerable writing. It’s grotesque and beautiful, horrifying and hilarious—sometimes all at once.

Read it on Kindle Unlimited, or purchase the ebook or paperback!

Get the ebook free when you sign up for my newsletter.

*

People With Problems is a collection of stories I wrote, one a week, like scooping strange fish from the sea. All different sizes, textures, colors…

Then I asked talented artist friends to each choose a story to illustrate, and it was as if I had released my fish back into the ocean and saw them return with mates.

I put a lot of care into exploring the subjects of the stories, which range from absurd, to darkly comic, to heartbreaking. Kirkus Reviews was complimentary with regard to their breadth and depth:

A collection of 29 character-driven works of flash fiction … shows that a lot can be done with a very limited word count.

– Kirkus Reviews

I hope you enjoy meeting the book’s various People With Problems as much as I have.

It’s available as a paperback or ebook—both of which include the full-color illustrations—from these retailers.

If you sign up for my newsletter in the field below, you’ll immediately receive a copy of the ebook for free.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!

I’m having triplets!

Let me clarify…

My wife is pregnant with a single human baby, and she’s begun the ninth month. We wave at him on the screen of the ultrasound machine. He waves back at us through the skin of my wife’s abdomen, like a tiny Freddy Krueger.

Now the caveat: my other two “babies” are books. Admittedly, less dramatic.

But the clock is ticking on my free time!

Near the end of last year, I aimed to keep the rhythm of posting a new short story every week. Then to make room for submitting to literary journals, assembling a book of the 2021 stories, and revising my novel, I dialed it down to a story a month.

…and wrote only one.

Listen, the feedback I got from beta readers of the novel had pulled me so deep into that headspace that when I sat down to write new stories, all I could think about was the massive literary tangle on my desk. All my fictional powers—conscious and unconscious—focused on that project.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that in my personal projects I’m a terrible creative multitasker.

The best visual aid I have is from an old Looney Tunes cartoon. Imagine that Cal the Chameleon is me, and each color is a different story I’m writing…

But my hands have not been idle.

The illustrated book of last year’s stories is almost DONE!

Subscribers to my newsletter get the ebook for free, so if you’re not already subscribed, sign up below.

The twenty-nine stories are all very different, but I found a common denominator (and title):

PEOPLE WITH PROBLEMS

I commissioned fourteen illustrations from talented artists I know. The rules were that the image had to be a certain size, and somehow inspired by their chosen story. That’s it.

The resulting art is as wildly diverse as the stories themselves.

Check some out for yourself.

More info soon. Thanks for your support.

We have no admissions desk, and no curators, but our collection is vast and eclectic.

The north wing borders the Kyner Playfield, and features an ever-growing collection of sporting goods. Soccer balls of all colors and patterns, from black-and-white to bright yellow, are suspended in the shelves of our vines. The sun has cracked most of their skins, and the seasons have relieved them of their pressure. Visitors are cautioned to watch their step, as the floor of the north wing is scattered with chipped golfballs and rain-swollen baseballs, split and spilling their strings.

We have two bicycles, one of which hangs from the ceiling of the north wing. It is a modern ten-speed, previously owned by Levi Orenstein and donated to us by Brayden Collins. Mr. Collins was our most generous benefactor of the last year, having donated the Orenstein bicycle, six baseball gloves, two basketballs, three schoolbags, five lunchboxes, one rented clarinet, and the headless body of a possum.

He recently departed to attend a military academy upstate. We thank him for his contributions.

The southeast wing features several exhibits dedicated to the science of time. This is where our second bicycle can be found, chained to a sapling by one Marcie Pittsmouth in 1975, and which now rests six feet off the ground, embedded in the trunk of that same tree. When it rains, visitors are invited to admire the drool of rust that issues from the tree’s lips of wrinkled bark.

The Green Tangle Museum is also excited to announce that approximately three years from now, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Marcie Pittsmouth’s contribution, the bicycle’s front fork bolt will have completely rusted through, and the wheel will fall to the ground. We warn visitors that the timing of this event cannot be precisely predicted, and as such it will not be advertised.

While they wait, attendees may choose to explore the museum’s Dome, so-dubbed at its inauguration in 1988 by Crossbridge High School students Paul Ashby, Lindsay Milligan, and Roger Zarn, whose initials are inscribed in a commemorative tree in the Dome’s west wall. Use of the fire pit is open to all museum guests. But we caution visitors to wear closed toe shoes, and ask them not to disturb the Dome’s immersive diorama of drug paraphernalia and contraceptive materials.

The prize specimen of the Green Tangle Museum is not yet accessible to the public: the body of forty-four-year-old Herbert Selnick, offered to our archives in 1953 by an anonymous donor. The specimen’s exposure to the elements was mitigated by an archival covering of vines, and volunteer fauna served to remove the most perishable matter.

The “Selnick Skeleton” exhibit will treat visitors to a veritable time capsule, from the specimen’s intact ochre suit of polyester gabardine, to its red-and-white nubuck Oxford shoes. Ephemera enthusiasts will appreciate the still-legible dry cleaning ticket in the back pant pocket, as well as the matchbook from the long-defunct Cassman’s Deli in the jacket pocket. Amateur and experienced forensic analysts alike will marvel at the “kerf marks” carefully revealed by our preservation team, made in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar vertebrae with a Schrade Walden Muskrat 2 model folding knife.

The knife itself can be seen in the collection of the Silty Delta Museum, located six miles south, beneath the Route 80 overpass.

We encourage everyone to visit the Green Tangle, Silty Delta, or any of our sister museums worldwide—in forests, near freeways, behind buildings, under porches, or inside your very own home.

We welcome you and your donations any day, at any hour, year-round.

Jessica sees a few people crying. Under the rain rattling on the roof, she can hear even more. Life-jacketed and lined up on a plastic bench in a bright orange capsule with a hundred other tourists. Couples, families.

A four-year-old boy next to her keeps asking between sobs, “Mommy, why are we in the little boat?”

His mom has her sweaty face against the foam shoulder of her life jacket, and her breath heaves. They were all given seasickness pills when they boarded, but hers isn’t working. “It’s just a little longer, honey. Just sit—” she swallows, “sit tight, okay?”

Jessica sees the “big boat” out the rain-streaked window, many-storied and lit like a skyscraper, its nose sinking into the dark water as if ashamed.

*

Jessica bowed her head at dinner and chewed carefully.

She’d been liberal with the adhesive, because that night she planned to order the steak—her first in two months. She pinned her hair back and made up the scar on her cheek as best she could.

But even cut into small pieces and squished between her molars for a long time, steak was too tough. She was grateful that Chelsea and Trevor—those were their names?—probably didn’t notice her difficulty chewing while they described their cruise around Australia the year before.

Chelsea is pregnant and shouldn’t have ordered the swordfish, but Jessica didn’t say anything.

She felt her front-left teeth start to move. Too much adhesive. Her lip tightened against them. “Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding. She held up a finger and tried to say, “Excuse me,” but the teeth popped out and flipped between her lips, the metal support clicked against her real teeth.

Trevor said, “Oh. Sure,” and looked at his food.

“Oh,” as in, he hadn’t expected a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a denture. “Oh,” as in, now he better understood the scar showing through her makeup.

In her cabin Jessica spat the denture into her hand. Her left incisor stood alone at the front of her mouth, the one they could save. Her molars huddled in the back.

She ran warm water and scrubbed away the adhesive, then added more from the tube in her purse and pushed the denture back in. The false teeth settled around her incisor like strangers at the dinner table.

She decided to order room service instead—mashed potatoes and gravy.

*

Trevor is in the back corner of the lifeboat holding up his phone and frowning. Chelsea’s head rests on his shoulder. She and Jessica meet eyes. Chelsea looks away and puts a hand on her belly. Jessica has to make herself look away.

A crew member screeches open the hatch and fires a flare into the rain. The black water out the window lights pink-orange.

The boy asks, urgent, “Mommy, why is there fire?”

Others snap alert and look out the window.

“Honey, that’s not—” She covers her mouth. Her fingers graze Jessica’s life jacket. “I’m sorry,” she says, “could you wa—” she swallows, “watch him while…”

Jessica wants to say no, but the mom is already standing and shuffling between everyone’s knees toward the open porthole.

The boy screams for her and gets up.

Jessica holds his arm. “Stay here.”

*

Ryan said looking at her reminded him of what happened.

He should have been the one to drive, but he had a drink after dinner. The other car shouldn’t have swerved.

In the hospital, she felt his tears on her cheeks. She felt his lips push hers into the new emptiness behind them.

When he pulled away he didn’t look at her. It felt like he never looked at her again.

The last thing she said was, “Please stay.”

Her sister got her the cruise, for a “fresh start.” She shouldn’t have gone.

But she did. To get away from everyone’s sad smiles and overlong hugs. The house, empty of Ryan’s things. The closed room with the crib and playpen still folded in their boxes.

*

“Your mommy’s feeling sick. She’ll be back.”

His face is wet and red. “Why is mommy sick?”

She wants to say it’s because his mom is weak. “Because we’re in a boat, and there’s a storm.”

“Why?”

She waits for an answer to come. “Sometimes bad things happen.”

Ryan had jumped ship, and their son had drowned in her waters.

She feels the boy’s stare on her cheek. “What’s that?” He points.

She touches the scar. “I got hurt.” Now it’s her turn to cry. Her lips tighten, and she feels the denture loosen. In the midnight rush to get to the lifeboats she’d been hasty with the adhesive.

“How?”

“I was—” Her teeth slip, click against the others. She puts a hand on her mouth.

“What’s that?” His eyes are patient, fixed on her mouth. His little barrel chest rises and falls under his life jacket.

She sucks at her teeth, pushes the metal ridge with her tongue until they settle back into place. Then she smiles. “My teeth,” she says carefully.

“Can I see?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a crew member says from his windowed perch, “the coast guard is on their way. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Cheers and applause.

But the boy’s eyes haven’t left Jessica’s tight lips.

She hesitates. Then she parts her teeth and pops the denture loose, holds it for him to see. Four resin teeth in two humps of pink resin gum. Metal wire spans the gap between them and curls at either end to hold them among her real teeth.

His eyes get bigger. This is when he screams, her face forever burned in his mind as the toothless witch in the lifeboat.

Instead, his little finger rises to his mouth and pulls his lip down. He grimaces. His pink tongue squishes through the gap where he’s missing his middle-left incisor.

Jessica’s eyes blur. A drop crawls down her cheek. She asks, “Did it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

This led to the second way in which she was now stuck: Her brilliant idea to use washers, yarn, and thumbtacks to build a 3D model of book fifteen’s outline in her studio apartment. It was a wall-to-wall, criss-crossed web of events, relationships, themes, and symbols, and it had her literally cornered.

The nodes hung in the air like the stars of her fictional galaxy, pulling at each other with visible threads of gravity. She worried if she cut something, the whole thing would come apart.

She had to keep the side romance between the pit mechanic best friend (the large washer hung over the TV) and the butcher of exotic meats (the medium-sized washer under the desk), because that was the only way to trigger the Le Mans banquet horse meat scandal at the climax (hung like wind chimes by the bathroom door), bringing Marguerite’s journey full circle.

But the other major thread blocking her way was the series of flashbacks when Marguerite’s brother Clifford teaches her to cheat at cards, which details her adolescence at the Jespers estate, and leads to the fateful poker game when she loses her prize stallion to an opposing card shark, gets chased by bookie thugs, and escapes in a stolen ’66 Mustang convertible—without which part three of the book can’t happen.

She decided to move the knife fight in part four, when the bookies catch up to Marguerite, from the café in Monaco to the romantic beach scene with the Algerian jockey, so as to open up a spot by the coffee table for her to slide under the scene when Marguerite first meets the pit mechanic, and get to the couch to rest for a moment.

This put the jockey in peril and pulled the slack out of their romance, which had always felt a little forced.

Satisfied, she sipped from the mug of coffee gone cold and saw from a new angle. There was a large open tunnel between Marguerite’s decision to throw the final race in Le Mans and a cluster of thumbtacks in the kitchen cupboard representing Marguerite’s lifelong desire for her parents’ approval.

A thread hung over her head.

She reached up to take it. But then stopped and sighed, watched the thread sway in her breath. If she ever wanted to escape this mess, she’d have to leave one or two loose ends.

My foot was asleep, buzzed and stung like TV static, so I fell into my bookshelf, got the corner of it in my eye. I assumed my right arm was asleep too, which explained why I hadn’t caught myself, so I turned on the light and saw the problem: my right arm was missing. The shoulder was round and smooth except the patch of pit hair sticking out.

By the time I got to the living room, my arm was folding and scratching in the corner like a long, hinged mouse trying to escape.

I watched it, waiting to wake up. The sharp throb in the bony edge of my eye socket was too real to be dreamt.

*

Mother called my arm a blessing. It had stopped growing when I was a baby. She and her friends, who blew hazy smoke and pored over large, beautiful cards in the basement of our house, touched it with icy hands, drew patterns down its flesh with their fingernails, and whispered into its palm cupped over their large creased mouths.

I was suspicious of them, because all their effort made my arm feel weaker.

Then suddenly, overnight, it grew.

My mother kissed it and promised to keep me strong.

I was afraid but relieved. I questioned nothing.

She disappeared after that, and my father refused to speak of her.

*

The bell startled me, and my arm stopped scratching. It turned and used the grip of its fingers to pull across the wood floor.

In the entryway it tapped on the door.

I picked it up by the bicep and pressed it to my shoulder. The arm jerked and punched, hit the fresh bruise on my eye. I dropped it, and it writhed to flip itself palm-down.

Tapping came from the other side of the door. A light, clustered sound like gentle rain.

I ran cold water in the bathroom sink, splashed my face, smeared it on my neck, splashed my shoulder and concentrated on flexing the arm that was no longer there.

I slapped myself very hard, four times.

Finally, convinced I was awake, I went back to the door where my arm waited. I unlocked and opened, and it dragged past the doorjamb, across the porch, and fell into the bushes.

On the doormat lay a small, puffy thing, like a doll’s arm. Its hand lay on its back, flexing its wrist reaching up to me.

I picked it up, feeling its cool flesh wrapped in my large hand. I held its end to my shoulder, and it joined. It stung and tingled all over, its muscles responsive to my will. I held it against me to warm it, and its fingers touched my ribs. The patch of pit hair itched and tickled it.

The water chilled on my face and neck.

The bushes at the side of the house rustled, and I watched a dark shape run across the yard and down the street.

Wherever she was, my mother was dead.

I kept the plan secret, assuming my parents would laugh and say, “That’s ridiculous, you’re not doing that.”

I spent my days thinking about all the swim meets, karate lessons, piano recitals, and soccer games all the other kids would have to go to—wake up early, get dressed up, pack into the minivan with a string cheese and a Capri Sun for breakfast, and rush off to this or that obligation with a bunch of other loudmouth kids.

But me, I’d wake when I wanted. Sit on a rock, whittle a stick, strip bark to weave, and stare through the endless trees between trees between trees.

If I saw a neighbor walking their dog on the trail, I’d slip beneath the ferns and wait until the collar’s jingle faded.

A big tree fell in a storm that winter, and the crater beneath its suspended root ball would make a perfect shelter. I’d use my knife to cut pine boughs and make a bed. Maybe a conical roof of boughs secured around the root ball.

Birds and squirrels were plentiful but difficult to catch. I imagined traps I could make from branches, rocks, and pinecones. I’d strip ivy vines from tree trunks for cordage.

I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to build a fire to cook what I caught. There were some burnt pits, but they were behind the high school, littered with empty bottles and crumpled cigarette packs, and the trees around them were spray-painted with penises, so I assumed fires were probably illegal.

In the absence of meat, I knew spots for huckleberries and blackberries.

There was a muddy clearing far back, almost through to the next neighborhood, where a caravan was parked and taking on moss. Next to it was a chickenwire enclosure with a couple of decaying geese. When I discovered them, one goose’s feathers were still mostly white. There was a pitchfork leaning against the cage, and I used it to stab the dead goose until its head separated from its long neck. A waste of good meat, I thought.

The person who lived in the caravan had been so close to living the dream, but never connected the dots. Imagine, keeping geese in a man-made cage when there were plenty of birds all around them! The blackberry ravine was just down the hill. Surely in the caravan they had tools to do all the jobs a Swiss Army knife could do, and they hadn’t had to waste their energy building and maintaining a shelter.

Despite these concessions and cheats, this person had failed. I pitied them.

*

I didn’t get the Swiss Army knife for my birthday that year.

I mentally prepared myself every spring to receive that multifaceted key to my survivalist dream, but spent every summer without it resigned to my domestic existence.

By the time I got it for my thirteenth birthday, years of rain had filled in the root ball pit. My perfect shelter was ruined.

In one of the places I’d scouted, sitting on a fallen tree, I used my new knife to whittle a stick into a spear. I got it sharp enough to draw a bead of blood from my fingertip.

We can barely move in these tight quarters, so we weren’t surprised when they went to bed and we heard pop, pop-pop. It feels good to laugh.

They talk soft around the rest of us, and tiptoe everywhere, even when they’ve taken the antlers off to work.

Qualls made a pun: “Be a deer and pass me the salt.” Now everyone says it.

Shelby and Winston pretend to aim rifles and laugh at their eyes getting big.

Yesterday, during their off-hours, we couldn’t find one. Kent walked down the length of the sub carrying the antlers, checked every nook, behind the pipes, between consoles, and finally found him hidden inside a torpedo tube. He pretended to be asleep, like he’d forgotten it was time to antler up.

Tonight’s the big show. Eight Points waits by the bunks, Ten Points by the periscope, and we all sit in the cafeteria between them. We ante spare change and nicotine patches into empty dehydrated pea cans.

On Callahan’s countdown from ten, they’ll charge. The antlers will clatter.

The dark water all around us will keep quiet.

Also, a child rides a tricycle over bright green grass behind a brown-shingled single-story house. He hunches forward to pedal across the chop.

The boat wake softens, the horizon sways, the sun flashes in and out of frame.

A bigger kid runs up to the tricycle and grabs the handlebars. The small kid steers away from him, into the sun. The horizon evens out as the big kid tips the trike and pushes the small kid into the rippling grass.

A large white bucket. A screwdriver pries the lid off to reveal a sludge of purple-red fish parts. The two children wrestle in the sludge, and a woman in a yellow sun dress rushes to separate them. A man with a blond crew cut and swim trunks says something and points out at the water. The woman guides the big kid out of frame, which pivots away from the man to look where he’s pointing, where the small kid rights the trike on the water. Another man dumps the bucket, and purple-red blooms into the lawn.

The blond man laughs and says something, while another him wearing old jeans carries a ladder and big pruning shears to a tall hedge on the boat deck, where he and other men assemble large fishing rods. The man opens the ladder and beckons to someone out of frame. The men cast off the back of the boat as the big kid runs up to hold the ladder. The man climbs and raises the shears.

Another man’s face is large in the frame, looking out to sea. He scratches his head, and the man on the ladder uses the shears to trim his curly hair.

The small kid sitting on the water blows dandelion fuzz and laughs at the way it spreads. The surface of the lawn shivers to life with snapping fish.

A man pulls a flexing rod, reels, and his line is suddenly connected to a TV in a living room, where the two children dance and hop around, and the small child climbs onto the couch clear of the biting fish. A gray fin cuts through the carpet and lowers again. The big kid joins the small kid on the floating couch, laughing. They both bounce.

The man pulls, relaxes, pulls, relaxes. The blond man steps through the couch to help hold the rod. He shouts and points at the TV. The carpet churns, and a smooth gray shape with rows of hooked teeth bursts from it.

A dark dining room with a doorway to a lit kitchen. Oven and microwave combo stacked over the horizon as a man enters with a knife and cuts the fishing line. He points at one of the party-hatted kids seated at the table in the dark and shouts, beckons others with an arm.

The yellow dress woman enters from the kitchen carrying a cake with five lit candles that drift down from the flare of the sun onto the deck of the boat.

The table boils and the shark’s gray face appears and grimaces among the children.

The small kid leans over the shark’s open maw and blows, and flames on the shark’s teeth flicker out.

The lights come on in the dining room. The blond man stands in slacks and party hat by the lightswitch, and he and the woman and children clap as the other him rushes in swim trunks to the edge of the table and points a gun at the small kid.

The shark reappears in the cake, and sparks and tufts of smoke blast into frame as the woman plucks the candles from its gills, where “Happy Birthday, Felix” is written in cursive red piping, leaving holes that bloom purple clouds.

A man points at the birthday cake, gets on his knees on the table and wipes his forehead. Another man appears with a long hooked baton. They jab at the cake as the big kid scoops his hand into the jerking, twisting shark and smears red and white across the small kid’s face.

Two men guide the hook into the small kid’s eye, and he cries, shows rows of curved teeth, grabs more icing from the chop and throws it at the big kid.

A few men stand around the dinner table with beers. One raises his can and takes a swig. Two of the men hold up a wooden handle with a metal hook from which hangs the shark, scooped and smeared.

The boat deck is a churn of children throwing fistfuls of sea foam.