A high school wrestling coach once called me “Mole”. I'd just taken off my thick glasses and put on the yellow school-issued headgear. I squinted into a wrestling stance, and apparently resembled a small, mostly blind mammal that lives underground. I've never fully shaken that kid—goofy, weird, never quite fitting in. I don't think I'm supposed to.

That's who I write about.

My fiction and poetry live in the margins of American life—rust belt towns, interstates, small diners, families holding on by a thread. The outsiders. The misfits. The ones worn down by failure who keep showing up anyway. Michael in Into the Fracking Fields is me as an adolescent, desperate to belong. Ansel in Red as Apple is the adult version—quieter, more beaten, still there. I write these characters because I know them. I am them.

Stylistically, I land somewhere between Steinbeck and Kerouac. Midwest Americana with raw edges. Genre-less by nature, which makes me harder to find and easier to remember. I write fiction and poetry without thinking of marketability, which means I can be too honest.