It’s no April Fool’s joke. Get my novel Don’t Mess Up My Block for free on the Kindle.

This offer is just for April 1 so act quickly.

Don’t Mess Up My Block is a parody of self-help books. This funny and cynical tale follows the adventures of Laurent Christ, a man who pursues self-improvement to its logical conclusion – he reinvents himself with a brand-new name and history. He drops a hundred pounds, shaves his head and goes on the road as a management consultant. Everywhere he goes, comic disaster follows as companies follow his glib counsel.

It’s a fast and funny read so download it today!

In honor of my Irish heritage, you can get Kindle versions of both of my books for free all this weekend.

Don’t Mess Up My Block is my newest novel. It’s a funny parody of self-help books that examines the American faith in gurus and easy solutions.

Murder in Ocean Hall is my first book. It’s a mystery and is ideal for anyone who wants to learn about Washington beyond the monuments.

And you don’t even need a Kindle to read them for free. You can also read them for free using the Kindle app on the iPad, iPhone or computer.

My new book, Don’t Mess Up My Block, has advanced to the Second Round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA).

ABNA brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Finalists will be announced in May with grand prize winners selected in June.

Don’t Mess Up My Block is a novel that satirizes self-help books like Who Moved My Cheese and The Secret. It follows the adventures of an ambitious consultant as he goes from disaster to disaster, believing that success is a matter of just following the right catchphrase.

Read the first chapter and then buy it for yourself!

• Kindle – just 99 cents!
• Paperback
• Nook

Here’s the first chapter of my new novel, Don’t Mess Up My Block. This fictional work is a satire of self-help books and is a funny, fast read. Check it out!

A Street Corner Epiphany

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.
- Tom Peters

Late one night, I got lost. It is on these unexpected journeys that you sometimes encounter the greatest discoveries. I certainly did.

Was it the 97 Pinch Mountain cabernet? Or perhaps the postprandial mojitos we imbibed at Marquez? It had been a client dinner that had gone long, after a day of business process reinvention. My client (an elderly CEO I cannot name) was garrulous, as many of them are, and wanted to talk and theorize after spending the day planning the next great reorganization of his Fortune 500 company.

I didn’t mind. Despite my hard-won business education and two decades of experience in strategic consulting, my role is often that of handholder, gently guiding decision-makers down the right path.

Besides, I could bill for it. My hourly rate had steadily increased over the past few years, as I moved from one successful client engagement to the next (many of which are described in these modest pages). While I had not quite reached the rarified air of my mentor, Esalen McGillicudy, I was on a slow, but steady, trajectory upwards. As my stomach digested more than a thousand dollars worth of Kobe beef, little did I suspect that the events following the dinner would lead me to my predestined success.

Close to midnight, we broke up, the taste of rum and mint still fresh in my mouth. A black limo glided up and ferried my client away. I declined his offer of a ride; the night was warm and I wanted to walk off some of the alcohol.

One downside of my chosen profession is the necessity of travel to cities around the country and around the world. After so much time in hired cars and five-star hotels, you start to confuse hotels, restaurants, spas. That great Thai fusion place – was that New York or Paris? Is the Four Seasons Scottsdale the one with the waterfall in the lobby? Did I sleep with the Hyatt concierge in LA or Sao Paolo?

I had driven here, I remembered. This was Washington, DC. I had parked my Miata on K Street. Find my vehicle and I could cross the river to my luxury condo in Virginia.

I set off south, I believed. The car parkers outside Marquez watched me with idle, Salvadoran curiosity.

Washington has lettered streets – F, G, H – and numbered ones – 17th, 18th, 19th. It is how the Washingtonians orient themselves and a pattern I had learned. Yet, after a couple of blocks, I found myself on curious, little angle of an avenue called Vermont.

Seemingly off the grid, the block was lined with glass-fronted office buildings, all of which were dark. Cars idled by in a curious pattern, stopping and starting despite the absence of traffic.

I paused. Which way was K Street?

A voice called out, husky and deep. Her tone was low, sexy and I didn’t catch the words the first time. She repeated the offer for me.

“Need some company?”

She was beautiful, standing nearly six-feet tall in pink heels. Tight silk shorts gripped her narrow hips. A tube top held in her bounty.

“I said, do you need some company? You look like you need some.”

The accent was on the “some” as she stepped forward, a friendly hand reaching out for my arm. She smelled like perfume and vodka.

In my position, one frequently has to finesse unexpected offers of female companionship. The director of a Swedish multinational once begged me to head up his marketing department, offering me an Ikea-furnished home and the blonde staffer of my choosing. I politely declined, citing the needs of an imaginary family.

“Mister, you know you want it.” Her lips glistened in the darkness, like overripe apples.

I am far from averse to the pleasures of female flesh but, let’s just say, I prefer something more appropriate for a man of my status.

“Sorry,” I said, the model of politeness. “I must decline.”

“For real?”

“Yes. But if you could point me in the direction of K Street.”

She turned her back on me and what a fine back it was.

I stood in place, unsure which direction I should go in. A car idled past the curb, its occupant lost in shadow. After a moment, it pulled away.

What an incongruent scene this must be, I thought. The stunning hooker and me, the business consultant, in a Burberry jacket and Italian loafers.

“What the fuck?” the hooker asked, watching the Prius accelerate into the distance. “You still here?”

“If you could give me directions.”

“I ain’t giving you directions. Get lost.”

“That’s the problem.”

A minivan with suburban plates pulled up. Seeing me, it drove off.

The hooker turned on me. Fiercely, she shouted in frustration, “You’re messing up my block!”

I staggered back, metaphorically. I was fucking up her block. Of course! My presence was costing her money. I was scaring away customers and denying her income. I was negatively impacting her business, without being aware of it until she brusquely told me.

A flash of insight illuminated me, like Paul on the road to Damascus. I strode off in a direction that turned out to be K Street. Yet, I hardly slept at all, possessed by the power of a simple idea:

DON’T MESS UP MY BLOCK

In business, and in life, we all struggle to achieve success. Yet, we all must deal with obstacles to empowerment – these are the people or situations that are messing up your block.

What’s fucking up your block? This book will teach you how to identify the things that are messing up your block and keeping you from your true potential.

And what do you do when you identify these things? Like the hooker of Vermont Avenue, you must banish the people, patterns and situations that are messing up your block. This little book will teach you how.

___________

This is just the beginning of the story. Buy it today:

• Kindle – just 99 cents!
• Paperback
• Nook

I’ve written a second novel. Don’t Mess Up My Block is a funny parody of self-help books like The Secret and Who Moved My Cheese. Here’s the description:

The secret to success is to not let other people “mess up your block.”

Or at least that’s what Laurent Christ thinks, in this satiric novel disguised as a self-help book.

Laurent has pursued self-improvement to its logical conclusion – he reinvents himself with a brand-new name and history. He drops a hundred pounds, shaves his head and goes on the road as a management consultant, providing advice to corporations around the county. Everywhere he goes, comic disaster follows as companies follow his glib counsel.

But failure is not going to stop him as follows the path laid out by his mentor, Esalen McGillicuddy. One man and a story – that’s all you need to make it in America.

As a management expert, he’s inevitably drawn to Washington, DC. But even he is appalled by the incompetent bureaucracy he finds in the city. Maybe he’s been wrong about everything. Maybe you need more than a catchphrase to find success in this country.

Laurent tells the sprawling story of his life in Don’t Mess Up My Block, a literary novel that examines the American faith in gurus and easy solutions. It’s a dark satire that is reminiscent of Catch-22 and Absurdistan.

Don’t Mess Up My Block is available in a variety of formats:

• Kindle
• Paperback
• Nook

Check it out – the novel is a funny, entertaining read.

This is a preview of my next novel, Don’t Mess Up My Block. It’s a parody of self-help books like Who Moved My Cheese. Look for it after the holidays!

Thematic Literary Magazine, Issue 3

My short story, The Really Real World, has been published in Thematic Literary Magazine. It was in the “smitten” issue and is a darkly comic look at how the quest for fame ruins a budding romance.

I wrote it after The Real World came to DC. They didn’t seem to belong here. We’re not sexy and, as ambivalent as I am about this city, at least it’s composed of people trying to accomplish things rather than just desperately seeking fame, like LA.

Fame distorts everyone, from the people in the spotlight to those in the wings.

My short story, “The Happiest Man in Washington” has been published in eFiction Magazine. You can read it below. If you roll over the pages, you’ll see backward and forward arrows. Click on the page and it will become a full-screen view.

This story was inspired by a homeless man I used to see daily at 17th and Rhode Island in DC. He was a neighborhood fixture, a happy face greeting commuters every morning. I wondered how he got there and if he ever thought about leaving the streets.

Like this? Read more of my short fiction and my novel, Murder in Ocean Hall.

(For you WordPress geeks, eFiction is a magazine that was created using Issuu. You can embed and customize the viewer.  I used the Issuu “customize and embed” tool to get the code to paste into my site. I made the embedded viewer one page across (instead of two) and to start on p.67, where my story is, rather than at the beginning of the magazine. The WP Issuu plugin was also necessary to make all this work. It’s not difficult.)

With more than 40,000 words written, I think it’s safe to reveal that I’m working another another book.

It’s not a mystery like my previous novel, Murder in Ocean Hall.

Instead, it’s a satire called Don’t Mess Up My Block. My novel is a parody of self-help tomes like Who Moved My Cheese.

The story is told by Laurent Christ, a management consultant and life coach from the plains of North Dakota. A late-night encounter with a hooker (who tells him to get lost) becomes his core philosophy, one that he applies successfully to life and work.

Aren’t we all afflicted with people or situations that are “messing up our block”? Whether it’s a nagging spouse or an annoying boss, wouldn’t we be more effective without them?

From the swankiest of CEO sanctums to the bowels of government, Laurent leads us in a misfortune-plagued journey through the world of work in America today. A creature of his own invention, he always comes out ahead, while leaving his clients in misery.

The book was inspired by the self-help genre, this popular and peculiarly American phenomena. If Mark Twain were alive today, he’d probably be writing a book on getting organized.

Excerpts from this book have already been published, as stand-alone stories:

Don’t Mess Up My Block
Thirty First Bird Review
Laurent goes to Africa and destabilizes a whole country.

Boom and Bust
SPLIT Quarterly
Shareholders are angry and only Laurent can save a desperate executive.

I’m diligently working on the book right now. Look for it on a Nook or Kindle later this summer!

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is one of those museums that even long-time Washingtonians aren’t aware of. It’s not on the Mall, it charges admission and with only a small sign marking its location on New York Avenue, it’s easy to overlook.

I had never been inside until invited by Michelle Cragle, the Communications Director at the museum. A former Masonic temple, NMWA is an architectural wonder. And it has some fascinating artistic treasures of interest to any gender. You don’t need to be a woman to visit the museum, as I wrote in a guest post for NMWA.