My novel: Kingston Dreams

 Set in Jamaica, this novel is loosely based on my experiences living and working in an inner-city Kingston community as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2002-2004.  This is not, however, a memoir; the characters and events of the story are completely fictional.

Synopsis:

One sultry day, Stevon, a sensitive thirty-one-year-old doctor, unexpectedly encounters his first love Shayla, a brilliant but unfulfilled single mother, selling fruit on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. Having recently returned to his home city from medical training abroad, Stevon is disturbed that the smart, confident student he knew twelve years before has become a worn-down higgler. Eager to help her family out of their desperate situation, he introduces Shayla to Jade, a PhD student who is researching urban poverty—and who happens to be his fiancée. Ignorant of her and Stevon’s past relationship, Jade hires Shayla to be her research assistant.

Reluctantly Stevon is drawn back into Shayla’s life and forced to deal with unresolved questions about the pregnancy that devastated their lives and love twelve years earlier. Soon, he is faced with the opportunity to right past wrongs, at the risk of losing his comfortable life and respectable fiancée. Alternating between Stevon and Shayla’s points of view, KINGSTON DREAMS explores the complexities of race and class and the limits of love in a city of contradictions.

Read the first chapter here: Kingston Dreams Chapter One

The opening scene of an earlier draft of the novel was published on the BBC website. Read it here.

Published short stories:

“The Wish Doctor” was published in the Sixth Los Angeles Nano Anthology, Journeys to Uncharted Lands.

“Collateral Damage” was published in the Third Los Angeles Nano Anthology, Meet The Systems.

“Geode” was published in the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society journal, Literary Landscapes.

“This Is What Happens When a Writer Listens to Too Many Children’s Songs” was published on the Akashic Books website.

Non-Fiction

An article that I wrote titled “Don’t Blame the Beam” was published in the October 2013 issue of International Gymnast magazine. It will be most amusing to gymnastics fans and people who enjoy watching televised gymnastics, but get annoyed by the commentators. Read it here: International Gymnast Article