After securing a teaching job at a foreign university on “the thinnest set of credentials,” a young man sets off for life in Varrenia, an impoverished eastern kingdom still emerging from the shadow of a decades-long dictatorship. Years later, living in the decadent capital of Garamdal, our protagonist watches a war unfold in the republic’s restive eastern provinces and reflects on what he has gained — and lost — in a life of travel.
Hi there! This is the substack page for a novel-in-progress entitled Age of Peace. I will be serializing the chapters of the novel here from July of 2025 to December 2025. The entire text will always be available for free, without a subscription — yay! The story will be comprised of seven chapters, released once each month.
Portions of this novel have been published in literary magazines. You can find a list of those further down this post.
Table of Contents
You can find the table of contents here.
About the author
In my late twenties, I did a short stint as a grad student in mathematical logic at the University of Amsterdam, where I learned that I am not smart enough to be a mathematician. After dropping out of grad school, I ended up staying in Europe for five years, and my time in Europe is probably easy to discern as an influence on my fiction.
For what it’s worth, I also did MFA in creative writing at the University of Texas when I was in my thirties.
My writing website can be found here:
I have been published in a few different magazines and literary journals. These are a couple of pieces that I’m very fond of:
“Some Reflections Occasioned By the Publication of the Revised Edition of the Practical Chinese Reader”, The Southern Review
"Gu Père", in Litbreak Magazine
I am also very proud to be able say that I grew up in Houston — I actually come from the same neighborhood as Lizzo, Mo Amer, and Tila Tequila, cultural luminaries all.
Previous publications
Portions of this novel have been published in the following literary magazines:
"In the East", in Your Impossible Voice, November 2023
“A Contested Island”, in Eclectica Magazine, Volume 27 Issue 1, January 2023
“The High Castle”, in The Missouri Review, April 2022
Influences
Some readers of my work have remarked that it shares an affinity with the following writers and books. In some cases, these figures represent inspirations that I have leaned into, in others, the similarities (of theme, style, subject matter) are more coincidental:
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee
Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan
A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
Paul Bowles
Milan Kundera
