I Have My Favorite Commandment. What’s Yours?

I used to hate the Ten Commandments. I hated Charlton Heston. I hated anything that smacked of authoritarian, paternalistic, overbearing high-and-mighty lording-it-over-you-ism, especially if it tried to tell me I couldn’t watch the Yankees on the Sabbath. Last week marked the observance of Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Ten Commandments, and is the …

The Silk Factory Threads Forward

In two weeks, you'll be able to actually hold The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family's Holocaust Story, in your actual hands. You can pre-order now, and get the ebook for the ultra-low price of $2.99. Pre-ordering my book really, really helps because it tells the Amazon algorithm that I have an audience and …

Yom HaShoah and the Silk Factory

Today marks Yom HaShoah, when we remember the Holocaust and its victims. Today is also the day my memoir becomes available for pre-order. It’s an odd feeling, and even calling it a Holocaust memoir is a very strange feeling, because The Silk Factory isn’t so much as Holocaust memoir as it is a memoir of …

Publisher: Found

I just finished reading The Girl Who Counted Numbers, by Roslyn Bernstein, and I can't say enough about it. It's a profound storytelling exercise in showing how history affects us in personal ways, whether we want it to or not. That's a topic I also explore in my forthcoming memoir for Amsterdam Publishers, The Silk …

Story: Gold Digger

Druid Hill Park in Baltimore is a shambling place crossed by potted roads and occupied by stands of trees and a museum and ballfields labeled one through six and there are old sedans parked alongside curvy curbs and you can just feel the potential for nefarious shit happening all over the place. This is where …

Digressing with Myself, Imposter’s Syndrome, and God

Thanks to Vipal Monga for sharing this song with me. There are days when you just need to know that things can be sweet and dandy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKYZbDjBEA Today was one of those days when I wonder what the hell I'm doing here anyway, a place way more hopeless than imposter's syndrome. And while I'm at …

The Factory: A Novel: The Pitch

What my brain looks like when trying to pitch my fiction. The good news is that I’m done with The Factory: A Novel. Now I need to pitch it (to an agent, a publisher, a movie producer, a doormouse… I suck at pitching my own stuff. There is a short pitch and a long pitch. …

Well What Do You Know

I'm really excited to be able to share my latest novel, The What Do You Know Contest, which is now available as a Kindle book. The title, as those of you who grew up in New York in the '60s and '70s probably remember, is inspired by a contest held by the Board of Ed …

The What Do You Know Contest: Launched!

Mike's new novel The What Do You Know Contest is now available exclusively for Amazon Kindle. Drugs! Treachery! Painted toenails! In this story we follow Max's recounting of his crucible childhood spring and summer of '74, but while we do that, the now-grownup Max's current bullshit bubbles to the surface. A coming of age story …

The What Do You Know Contest

Mike has a new novel I'm hoping to finish up converting and release on Kindle this weekend, so here's a preview! I awoke and kicked off the covers, violently cursing myself under my breath. I had no idea how long I had been asleep or how late it was. I dressed rapidly in the light …

Blomqvist Hits Kindle, Free on Friday!

Blomqvist is now available on Amazon Kindle! Prime Kindlers can borrow the book for free, and as a special surprise it will be free to purchase all day Friday 6th January 2012! Set in 11th Century Europe, Blomqvist is narrated by the protagonist’s devoted amanuensis, faithful standard-bearer, and unrequited lover, Axel Oxensteirna. Axel tells us …

The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing (Paperback)

Eleven stories told from the depths of anger, lust, and the confusion of doing the right things at the wrong times. Michael Missing, the name of eleven different young men in various states of unrest, is the linked but unrelated protagonist of these wry and angry tales; a hit man, the cabin boy of 19th …