Decency is a collection of short fiction that examines how people struggle with the conflict between their compelling inner lives and cultural norms. The stories are concerned with dishonesty about self, sexuality and love and examine themes of true and false, honesty and disguise. The protagonists struggle to maintain a mask of normalcy, but in the cathartic process of shedding their facades, they subject themselves to painful risks, lose jobs, human connection and beloved illusions. They are male and female and range in age from sixteen to mid-fifties and include a honeymooner in Rome, a nail tech in Miami, a suburban English teacher and a naive adolescent in 1960's rural California. The stories are narrated in both first and third person, and the plots vary from chronological to more complex time structures. The tone is on the border between comedy and the serious, and the collection is filled with optimism.

THE LONE PALM is a noir novel set in a timeless Bay Area city. At nineteen, Colin Spector is a hot-shot crooner at the Lone Palm, a nightclub owned by the Christos' crime family, headed by Cephalus "the Old Man" Christos and his ne'er-do-well son, Gabriel. When Colin falls for Gabriel's girl, a stripper named Zoe, Gabriel orders the singer's vocal cords cut and has him framed for a crime he didn't commit. After seven years in prison, Colin is manipulated into working for his former tormenter. Gabriel is now estranged from his father, who has branched into the world of politics. Working as mob muscle, Colin investigates the Old Man and delves into the whereabouts of his former love. The book draws on the tradition of noir novels like Jim Thompson's After Dark My Sweet and Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, with their seedy city streets and shady characters. The novel is divided into three parts, the first and third told in omniscient third person to depict the layered world of the novel, while the longest, central section is told in Colin's first person voice to elucidate the internal struggles and actions he takes on his road to redemption.

This novel reveals the counterculture as seen through the eyes of a group of coming-of-age, vulnerable, reckless, and often pretentious youths. In New York, Thelonious Horowitz is an up-and-coming musician who is uninspired and decides to trek to Chicago for the biggest musical festival of the summer. A diverse cast of characters, living in New York, Miami, and San Francisco, round out the novel, of which Thelonious is the connective tissue, ultimately bringing everyone together at the festival where paths converge for an event none will soon forget, and a concert a few will get to see. The novel explores the spirit of youth through classical themes like love, wanderlust, freedom, betrayal, and family, all placed within a contemporary context, and in opposition to technology, fame, consumerism, the New Age, and to many, responsibility. This post-modern tragicomedy captures a moment in time in the spirit of Kerouac’s On the Road and Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Firefly Curios and Sundry Lights contains 33 poems and 55 pages, mostly free verse lyric narratives issuing from various geographic, emotional, and temporal landscapes. The book is divided into four sections which might roughly be titled: "before," examining themes of childhood and death: "on-the-road," relaying the compulsion to travel, "odd-and- ends-limbo," including pieces which have no context within the time line; and "in-one- place-for-now," reflecting modes of communication, ordering, and longing. Other concerns include speculations about existence, observations of nature, and the importance of science as a means of apprehending the world. The work reveals a belief in the interconnectedness of mind and matter, combines seriousness and humor, and displays a sonic sensibility. These poems of solitude and observation are themselves vehicles, their motion a means of dislocation in order to find the self. Firefly Curios and Sundry Lights is smaller than a bread box and you can dance to it.

Reconcilable Differences is the story of Miami radio host Adam Painter. Confused about relationships, Adam cancels his wedding and, under the guidance of his bad-boy best friend, delves into the demi-monde inhabited by strippers and hookers. On the air he begins to examine how men and women interact. Adam explores the night world, moving from a connection with its denizens through his talk show to direct experience of its license and loneliness. He fails miserably in his clumsy efforts with women and is fired, sued and arrested. An unlikely, unwilling rebel, Adam confronts change and stumbles almost truculently toward self-discovery. This picaresque novel is told in the third person closely attached to the protagonist. The time scheme covers a thirteen-week radio ratings period. The story encompasses the worlds of radio and the sex industry, using South Florida settings to re-inforce character, plot and theme.

The collection of stories recreates an impression of a lost time and place. In "Howardsville Depot," the stories are set in rural Virginia and span the years from 1929 to 1969. While kernel situations are based in identifiable events, the stories explore the subtle dreams and aspirations of characters in the community which has the railroad depot as it hub. In "Head-on Collisions," protagonists find themselves in inevitable situations provoked by their own limitations. The only choices are forced and evolutionary with no clear solutions.

Tootsie's Regret and Other Stories is a collection of fifteen interlinked short stories that explore the relationship between Tootsie Plotnik, an aging Jewish gangster turned- legitimate businessman, and his daughter, Deborah, a middle-aged, recently divorced writer who learns of her father's unsavory past. The stories show how Deborah's divorce colors her perception of her father, while her growing intimacy with the older man forces her to reexamine her assumptions about his past and one's ability to know another human being. The stories' style was influenced by The Yiddish Policeman's Union, in which Michael Chabon intertwined Yiddish expressions with the hard-boiled style of mystery writing. As with Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, the stories are told over a series of visits between father and daughter. Though particular to the Jewish-American experience, the stories echo universal themes about facing the aging and loss of one's parents while accepting them as vulnerable, imperfect human beings.

"Once A Catholic" is a novel about the indelible effects of growing up Catholic. The novel is told in a series of stories and poems. The first story, "Credo," offers an overview of the rich culture of Catholicism that binds the Daley family together. "Before The Fall" recalls the safety and warmth of that Catholic faith. Subsequent stories focus on individual family members and events, and the Catholicity that lies at their core. "Holy Orders" tells the story the firstborn male child whose destination is the priesthood. "Finding Ecstasy" is a daughter's story of rebellion through sexual exploration. "Sweet Reconciliation" is the story of a search within oneself for forgiveness, the cornerstone of Catholic upbringing. "Acts of the Apostle" demonstrates the hopelessness of a faith under attack. The final story, "Holy Relics," demonstrates the never-ending desire for redemption and the important act of returning sacredness to its rightful place.

LOVE COMES IN AT THE EYE relates the story of Marshall Craig, a Midwesterner transplanted to South Florida who turns 35 in the course of the book. Marshall is an assistant curator for a Miami art museum, a man who has been obsessed with--as he calls it--a greed for seeing from a young age. His fascination with the surface of appearance of things is exacerbated by his precocious studies in art and its histories. Marshall views himself as marked by his red hair and freckled skin, as someone whose chances of attracting a partner into a meaningful relationship have been diminished by his looks. He is colored by his image of himself as unattractive and most importantly, convinced that his romantic life would be more successful, more vibrant, if he'd been graced with the face and figure of, say, a Velazquez. When Marshall meets a Cuban-born man from Atlanta, he is transfixed by the conviction that this is the man the universe has selected for him. The thrust of the story goes beyond boy-meets/loses/gets-boy to an exploration of said boy coming to terms with his definition of self. In a pivotal span of six months, the book explores Marshall's obsessions with seeing and how they define his vision of reality, the emphasis placed on beauty in gay culture, the tentative beginnings of a relationship as it takes root and grows, and finally, the inexplicable, magical forces that direct our romantic destinies.

JUMP! HOW HIGH? is a memoir of a journey to a black belt in Karate, one that explores the duality inherent in being a nurturing yet powerful woman. The book moves between personal growth and an exploration of karate training, questioning both the means by which martial arts training promotes growth and the dichotomy of what it means to be a good girl/bad girl. The karate style in which the author trains embraces the Samurai virtues of honor, justice, loyalty, wisdom, compassion and bravery. This is juxtaposed by the virtues of the Southern woman, compliance, hospitality, and warmth, with which the author was brought up. In the final analysis, the author grapples and comes to terms with the question of loyalty to the self.