Now Available: "Leaving New York" on Amazon KDP

As previously announced, the big day has arrived! Yes, after four years of intermittent toil, yours truly, Mr NYC, has published his first novel. 

It's called "Leaving New York" and it's a road trip story about two friends set in the spring of 2011. So, if you're in the mood for an entertaining story and a little early nostalgia for the Obama era, this novel's for you!

Here's the little advertising spiel that better describes the book:

Calculating route . . .

Newly thirty, newly single, stuck in a boring job, and living with his father, Tommy Sayles is in the fast lane to nowhere.

But when his pal Eric Steinberg blows into town, unexpected events lead them to toss aside their lives and go on a wild road trip. Along the way, the friends encounter old acquaintances, new lovers, strange characters, big challenges, and unexpected joys. And yet, as they travel into an exciting future, the past isn’t far behind.

Journeying from the streets of New York City to the rolling terrain of the Midwest, barreling through the haunted underbelly of the South and the alluring danger of the West, going all the way to the sexy outrageousness of the Coast, Leaving New York is an unforgettable ride into the soul of America.

Friends can take you anywhere. 

You can buy it now on Amazon KDP at Leaving New York. Thanks! Hope you enjoy!

 

The End of "Girls"

I haven't written a lot about the HBO series "Girls" on here, the Brooklyn-based dramedy about four twenty-something women living in NYC. I was a fan, if not a big fan, of this show but it was always well-done, very funny, and quite insightful about the crazy minefield that is one's twenties.

Seeing it in my thirties gave me a grim satisfaction at having survived this miserable time. The thing about one's twenties, if you make it out, isn't so much that you've survived it but that you've been defined by it -- and will be, for the rest of your life.

Now it's over (the final episode debuted last night) and something occurs to me: the ending of "Girls" really marks, to me at least, the end of the Obama era more than the actual end of the presidency did. There was something about this show -- namely, its youthful energy, its cosmopolitan attitude, its celebration of tolerance -- that was reflective of that optimistic presidency.

The fact that "Girls" overlapped the very end of Obama's first term and the entirety of its second makes it a show firmly rooted in that time; that its final melancholic season occurs in the first days of the Trump nightmare shows that "Girls", like the Obama presidency, was a special thing that can only last so long. Eventually, darkness falls. Your youth ends. And then you go on. 

Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier - Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, NY, April 15 1947

Announcement

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging much lately and the reasons are simple: I have two kids, a full-time job, a marriage, and a life. But there's another reason -- I've also been writing a book.

That's right, after ten-plus years of blogging, and four years of on-and-off effort, I've finally finished composing a novel that I've very proud of and can't wait to inflict on the world. 

The book will be released via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing within the next few weeks (I'm aiming for the end of this month). Needless to say, once it's published, I will post all about it here (quite often) and include a link so ya'll can purchase a copy and hopefully even read it. 

So get excited (or not) and check back here at the end of April. Thanks!