‘What We Talk About When We Talk About The Apocalypse’ is now Available

Journal

I am proud to announce that my illustrated short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About The Apocalypse is now available!

You can buy the ebook from me on my Payhip store.

My book is available in ebook, paperback, and hardback from Amazon.

Check my book page for the latest updates on other platforms.

Want to read an excerpt?

What follows is the preface to my collection to help you determine if this book might appeal to you or someone you know.

PREFACE

I’ve dedicated this collection to the memory of my grandpa Herbo. Whenever he visited, he would take me to a used bookstore and buy me stacks of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror paperbacks. We read many of the same series together and we’d talk about the books for hours, sitting in the driveway in his well-kept Toyota Tacoma.

I once asked Grandpa Herbo why he didn’t like reading reality fiction. 

“My life is real enough,” he said. “Why would I want ‘reality’ in my entertainment?”

Fast forward to 2023. I get it now, Grandpa.

I read somewhere that the word “apocalypse” means “a revelation.” First there is the catastrophe, then a reassessment, then a new beginning. Many of the stories in this collection are about those moments of revelation—the twist in understanding where what you thought was real turned out to be just a story in your head. For many of us, the past few years have been a time to take stock and think about whether the things we were doing before are still working for us.

Each of these stories is a time capsule of my subconscious at a particular time in my life. These stories were written over a span of about seventeen years, from my early twenties to my late-thirties. This period covers college, graduate school, moving across the country (multiple times), marriage, becoming a parent, illness, the deaths of parents and grandparents, financial struggles, career successes, and failures.

I wanted to collect these stories all in one place. 

Some of these stories haunted my hard drive and my brain for many years. It is time to exorcise them and put them all together in one volume, so other people can enjoy these dark little beauties.