Novels

Feed is a novel set in a fictional post-revolutionary Nebraska, at a time when the developments and progress of the revolution begins to come into question. The former revolutionaries must dive into an internet-like database, referred to as the Feed, in order to unearth memories critical to their survival.

The Dreams of Gods is a surreal-realist novel that follows a grieving man in the wake of his wife’s death through a strange conspiracy that seems to bend reality around him, forcing him on a curious odyssey of self-discovery, eventually leading to understanding as he learns how to come to terms with himself and the world around him. It is an exploration of the many faces of god and the universe, as well as humanity's place within it all. Inventive and energetic, the hairbrained plot takes the reader deep into a world that becomes more bizarre with each page, while fantastical characters pop in and out of the story in shocking and comical ways and nothing is quite what it seems.

This thesis/novel, The Marvelous Garden of Marcel Verdell, follows the fictional story of one local government bureaucrat, Jude Wintertour, into the irregular and viridescent town of Garden, wherein he encounters the titular gardener, Marcel Verdell, and, along with a host of other residents, confronts the oppressive, convoluted past, envisions a hopeful future, and lives with the consequences of the blindsight-choices of the present.

Journalists are supposed to stay neutral. But, when it comes to reporting on a viral protest against a gay conversion therapy program, young, lesbian reporter Anna Mitchell isn’t so sure she agrees with what’s neutral anymore. Gay Christian Speed Dating takes place in Iowa City, Iowa and follows Anna Mitchell, who has moved in with her parents after getting laid off from her prestigious breaking news job. When performance artist college kids go viral protesting a local gay conversion therapy program, it might be Anna’s one shot to get back in the journalism game. But Anna has conflicts of interest: a crush on the girl who is leading the protest, and, even worse, her own opinions on the subject matter that she can’t seem to keep from spilling. This contemporary new adult novel is 42,000 words in a tone of The Great Believers meets Priestdaddy.

This thesis is a novel that takes formal cues from works such as Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual. The work takes two separate forms in its chapters; the first being more traditional narrative chapters that follow a set of characters as they explore the surreal landscape of the titular Hotel, and the second are akin to flash fiction pieces that describe individual rooms in the Hotel. Together the narrative attempts to address issues of class and the way that capitalism subsumes people’s identities, as well as the potential of the natural world using leftist politics as a lens for this critique.

In Into Memory, memory is no longer something which resides in the past. Instead, it is a substance which can be extracted and consumed like a hallucinogenic drug, immersing consumers in a vivid and immediate past whose physical effects linger long after the images of that memory disappear. For Paul Mendez, these memories offer an escape from a present defined by grief, while former professional football prospect Calvin Long seeks to reconnect with a past too long stained by regret. For law school student Kara Douglas, selling erotic memories is simply a business transaction—that is until she considers removing the parts of her past that stand in the way of the future she desires. Set in the rolling hills of contemporary Tallahassee, Into Memory explores the relationships that we maintain, for better or worse, with our pasts and what we will do to avoid, restore, or change them.

This thesis is a second draft of a novel about an orphaned girl and boy, Kate and
Penn, who befriend one another on a Midwestern college campus and discover belonging
and a sense of self, as well as a fantastical quality they both possess called Influence. The
story explores themes of family, friendship, community, fear culture, and adult identity.

Consider the Flowers of the Field is a novel-in-progress about four daughters who
are raised in deep-hollow Appalachia. When their parents finish rehab and prison stints,
they start their own church and force the girls to participate in the ministry. The story
follows the girls into adulthood and examines the ways each is affected by history,
environment, birth order, memory, secrets, and religion. One daughter renounces her
parents and God and spends her life in academia and social work, one takes up the
preaching mantle, one is the promiscuous, drug-addled antithesis of what her parents
stand for, and one daughter is born after her parents start their new life so she has no
concept of how things used to be. Consider the Flowers of the Field asks, “How do we
transcend, embrace, or reject the dogma of our youth?”