Author / Story Teller / Imagination Expert / Dad
I’m an author who loves crafting immersive, emotional stories that stick with readers long after the final page. My books—including A Sour Chord, My Last Days, Dudley Road, My Best Friend, Marty and Upstairs—explore themes of love, loss, and the messy, beautiful complexities of life.
I was born and raised in Massachusetts, and much of my inspiration comes from personal experiences and the people around me. I aim to write stories that feel honest and human—ones with lyrical prose, layered characters, and emotional depth.
When I’m not writing, I’m spending time with my wife, Megan, and our daughter, Samantha. My immediate family is everything to me, and it’s often at the heart of what I create.
My work has been fortunate to receive kind words from readers and critics alike, and I’m always humbled by the connections people find in my stories. Whether I’m diving into the human psyche or unraveling life’s quieter mysteries, I hope my books leave an impact—and maybe even offer a bit of comfort along the way.
My Story
My publishing journey officially began in 2014, but I started writing full-length stories in the early ’90s.
Thanksgiving of 1992, at just thirteen years old, I recall sitting at the dinner table listening to the dot-matrix printer in my dad's office printing off the first copy of my first "book"; The Case of the Whispering Shadow.
It was a murder mystery and was as terrible as you can imagine it would have been, given I wrote it when I was twelve to thirteen.
Do I still have it somewhere? Yes. Will I ever edit it and release it? Definitely not.
In 1996, I got my first computer. We'd always had a family computer that we shared. But I finally had my own, in my room.
The only thing I could really do with it was go on AOL, like everyone else at that time.
But it gave me freedom to do things. To learn to type. To communicate. To practice saying things and seeing strangers' reactions.
In 2001, I wrote the very first iteration of A Sour Chord came to fruition.
A girl I'd been dating needed a monologue for an audition. So I did what I normally do and overdid it by writing a play for her.
It was what loosely formed the foundation for what A Sour Chord would become in its final form.
After thirteen years, something got into me. I'd been building websites for about fifteen years at that point, but self-publishing books was just becoming a big thing. I wanted to see if I could figure out the ins and outs of it (and wow, is it a lot!)
So I dusted off my play of A Sour Chord and I began writing, in secret. I didn't tell anyone about it, because I didn't want to publicly fail. I didn't want people to ask "how's the book coming?" if I'd given up.
So I wrote it in secret and only told my wife when I was done writing.
I self published the book and launched my author business in May of 2014.
I initially had the idea for My Last Days as a blog, with a series of posts about what someone who was dying would do. The idea came to me in 2013.
The first draft of My Last Days was done before A Sour Chord was published. I wrote the draft while my buddy, Austin, was editing A Sour Chord.
It took a full six years to finish it.
The editor I hired hated it. Like, a lot. A real lot. And I let that get to my head. I was still early on in my writing career, and I took a lot of her feedback personally. So I shelved the book for a handful of years.
I'd periodically re-visit it and try to re-write it in a way that she thought would be better. And I did. I rewrote a lot of it.
But I kept the heart of it. I kept the bits that I knew would resonate with readers.
And, sure, I hated it for a while. Just the idea of opening the file made me nauseous. But I eventually did it, and I loved how it came out. I love the end product. And, not to brag, but it's my highest rated book on all platforms that allow readers to rate books.
For as long as I can remember, I've been telling the scary ghost story of what happened to my friends and I when we went exploring a haunted road in the next town over from where we grew up.
I'd tell it at parties, campfires, dinners. Wherever.
In 2022, I finally started writing it as a book.
I took everything that happened to us and wrote it down, doing my best to capture the memories of all those years prior.
The best part of writing the book was that I got to reconnect with all my friends from my teenage years to get their permission to use their names. And, to the best of my knowledge, all of them have read the book, as well.
After writing what I thought would be my only scary story, I wanted to write something light-hearted.
My Best Friend, Marty is the tale of two unlikely friends and their lives. It takes place over twenty years and follows Matt and his best friend, Marty.
I often get asked if Marty is a real person, and, no. Marty is not real, but he has the combined emotions and traits of a handful of my real friends. If I took them all, put them in a blender, and mixed them up, I'd get Marty.
After Dudley Road, I said I'd never write another ghost story or another scary book.
But the old adage of "give the people what they want" holds true. Since Dudley Road is my best seller (by about 20 to 1), I thought writing another scary story would be good.
The point of writing books is for people to read them, right?
So I started writing Upstairs in Summer of 2024 and will publish it in the Fall of 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
What got you into writing?
I’ve always love to read. That feeling you get when you finish a good book and think “bring me another!”. I love it.
And, despite being somewhat of an introvert, I love telling stories. I love seeing people’s faces when they react to a story I’ve told or a joke I made. I love interacting with people in a way that connects us.
Writing is just a natural extension of who I am as a person. It feels natural to put my thoughts down on paper.
What's your favorite part of writing?
There’s two favorites parts that are a tie.
- Finishing something you’ve been working on for a long time. Finally getting to the end of that difficult chapter, or even when you finish editing your whole manuscript. That feeling of accomplishment is something I can’t even describe in words.
- When a stranger reaches out to me and tells me they enjoyed something I wrote.
Related to number 2; one of the women at the gym I go to asked me “do you and Marty keep in touch?” one day after she finished reading My Best Friend, Marty.
It was such a compliment because she thought Marty was a real person who I was friends with. This completely made-up person that I created out of thin air was so convincing in the story that she thought he was real. I loved that feeling.
How do you come up with the ideas you write about?
Many people think coming up with the ideas for books is hard. It’s quite the opposite. I have ideas almost every day.
Coming up with an idea only takes a moment. A fleeting second to pop into your mind.
And then, sometimes, it’s gone. Sometimes, if you’re like me, you write it down quickly, so you don’t forget.
The hard part is finding the time to write all those stories. If you’re a small-time author, like me, you likely work a day job (or two!) and fit in writing when you can. Losing those eight hours a day to your day job is frustrating. If writing ever afforded me the luxury of doing it full time, I’d be able to churn out so many more ideas that I’ve written down over the years.
What's your favorite line you've written?
There’s a chapter in My Last Days where Andy is having a rough day and Anna is trying to cheer him up.
They’re on Boston Common (one of my favorite places, by the way) and she’s convincing him to get off his butt and move on with his life and to get some ice cream with her.
“Look,” she clearly wanted to scream at me. “Dude. Look, dude. You have to know that I get it. I understand all of that. I may not be as sick as you, but it’s not a friggen competition. It’s not about who’s sicker or who’s dying or what. It’s about right now. It’s about here. It’s about chocolate fucking chip ice cream. So get off your ass and let’s go already.”
Something about her character always drew her to me. She’s the combination of so many strong and motivated women I know and love, and this line, in particular, really drives home who she is as a person and how she contributes to Andy’s journey.
What will you write next?
This is the thing I get asked the most often.
And the honest answer, as much as I hate it, is that I don’t know.
I usually go into the next book with an idea picked out from my list of books I want to write. I go into it knowing that it is the thing I’m going to tackle next.
But then something happens when I sit down. Either I get writer’s block for the thing I wanted to write, or, more commonly, another idea pops into my head and I want to write that, instead.
I had no intention on writing Upstairs, but when I sat down to write something else, Upstairs just came flowing out of me.
I want to write, how do I get started?
What I’m going to tell you here may surprise you, but…
Just sit down and write the damn thing.
Your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to make sense to anyone but you.
But the hardest part of writing a book is not writing it. It’s not sitting down and smashing your fingers on a keyboard for hours and days and weeks at a time. The hard stuff comes later.
The easiest thing is to write. Let the words flow from your brain into your computer or onto your notebook. Just go until your story’s told. Then you can go back and edit it, clean up your grammar, check your timelines, etc.
Worry about the small details later. Just sit down, open a document in your preferred editor, and start writing.
What tools do you use to write?
There’s so many tools and apps that I use. Mainly because I’m an app nerd at heart, and I’m never 100% satisfied with an app I use.
My primary writing tools are:
- Scrivener for writing and editing
- Atticus for formatting my finished manuscript for publishing
- Photoshop for editing images for marketing purposes.
- Spotify because I can’t write in silence. I usually listen to movie scores or classical music when I write. I find it helps keep my mind focused.
- Todoist to keep track of the ideas I have for scenes, characters, chapters, etc. if I’m away from my desk or just need to jot down a quick thought.
- WordPress for my website. In a past life I was a web developer, so WordPress is natural for me. It gives me all the control I want, has unlimited extendability options, and is pretty user friendly once you get over the learning curve.
There’s lots more things that come into play for the final published product. But these five things above are the core of what I use on a daily basis to create.