About this project

"By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange."

-- Jane Jacobs

South of Heaven is the result of my lifelong love affair with the poison fruit of this bitter earth: her cities, and the struggles, stains, and lovely jaded sleep of the people that built and dwelt and died in them. It is about stories, about religion, about art and porn and movies; it is a book about romance; it is a book about the secret history of Los Angeles, and her last days on this earth. 

I am lucky enough to have been born with a wanderlust that could consume the distances between stars, and though there are few places on this earth to which I have traveled that I do not hold precious, it is her cities that I will always hold dearest in my heart. New York, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London--the future of the world is spelled out in their static-ridden broadcasts and the spires of their towers and the constellations of their lamplit streets at two in the morning, but no one ever sees it because no one looks at anything other than their own navels anymore. This is my attempt to change that. This book is my love letter to the metropolis, and the dreams she has inspired in me.

A weary private detective on one last case, tasked by a sad-eyed widow to find her stolen heart; a young man from a small town who comes to the big city to find his dreams and instead finds a beautiful, unaging woman who is the spitting image of a long dead movie goddess from Hollywood's Golden Age; a radical religious zealot who, through an oversight on the afterlife's part, receives his seventy-two virgins before his scheduled martyrdom; an ambitious porn star whose metamorphosis into androgyny appears a little too literal--South of Heaven is told through the intertwined lives of exaggerated character archetypes that typify the fictional lifeblood of Los Angeles, and at the nexus of these stories, a man who may or may not be her creator.

The basic background of the novel is on my blog, Submetropolitan, as is its opening.

Despite the inexorable evolution of commerce and industry into wholly post-analog digital entities, there is still a stigma associated with self-publishing, ie, that people only self-publish because they are not "good enough" to succeed via traditional avenues. I want to be a part of the burgeoning number of writers who will inevitably prove them wrong.

Traditional publishing will someday soon be just another casualty of a newly extant post-industrial age. As will everything else. Even cities. Especially cities.

This is the future. And I want to be a part of it. I want to be a part of it so badly that I left everything behind to move to Los Angeles and be caught up in her swell, here at the edge of the world. I am at the moment homeless and jobless, with nothing sustaining me but the charity of friends and the desire to see this novel come into fruition. The funds of this Kickstarter project will go into finding suitable accommodations for the 6-9 months I need to write the manuscript, edit, and market the finished work, as well as food and--let's face it--the cigarettes and beer I need to properly function.

More information can be found on my blog, and I will be updating regularly on my Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

For even reading this far, I thank you. I hope you will choose to assist in seeing it through to the end. I do not believe in destiny; I do not believe that we are meant for anything particular; I do not believe in fate or the divine or there being anything in life beyond the consequences of how we choose to treat one another, but I do believe that everyone has at least one story to tell. I want very much to tell mine. And I would appreciate your help in making that happen, with all my fucking heart.