Moneyboys is a novel that explores queer identity in the early 2000s, in the final few years of the height of the American boy band craze. The story's protagonist must reconcile her own identity with what she views as two increasingly opposed goals: to make space for other queer people in turn-of-the-century Tinseltown and to continue getting hers. Her pursuit of these goals, her life outside of the fame machine, and the glossy, holographic, six-packed residents of the internet cause her to forge different versions of realness – an ability to define and embody an idea until it's the truth – for herself, for the band of publicly-closeted and mostly-queer boys she manages, and for the American boy band consumer. Because this is still the turn of the millennium, she's accompanied by hybrid intermissions of morning commute radio, basic cable news tabloids, and IM conversations – none of which makes it any easier for her to discover or remember what is truly real. Though this is, of course, what she must attempt to do.

What if the sun disappeared but the world didn't end? A boy with wings fell out of the sky? A piano prodigy vanished but the disappearance didn't stick? Sunseekers is a collection of short stories that explores the intersections of memory, identity, and narrative. How do the stories we hear, tell, and internalize shape the people we are becoming and the worlds we are making? Stories stay with us. They shape us, and they change us. The longer they sit within us, the more they begin to interpret our pasts, define our presents, and set trajectories for our futures. And as the boundaries of memory are blurred, so are the patterns of time. In Sunseekers, the traditions of magical realism, fairy tale, and literary realism intersect as characters and their narratives are exposed to the wild and startling fabric of the world as it is.

This novel explores the nature of good, if flawed, people that are put under intense pressure. Using alternating point-of-view characters, I showed the good and bad parts of Washington, DC and the surrounding area through the eyes of someone that has benefited from privilege and someone that has not. These juxtaposing views change over the course of the novel until both point-of-view characters have become something different than they were at the start, learning humility and trust, respectively. Through the alternating chapters, I wanted to show two viewpoints of the same city and the same set of events, each contributing a unique perspective to the overall narrative. This technique let me touch on the beauty of large cities as well as the inadequacies therein.

I'll See You in the Morning explores the relationship between the choices we make and the consequences we bring on ourselves and others. The characters of this collection all struggle with decisions that have unforeseen results, and decisions that cannot be taken back. Their stories probe the obscure fault-line that exists at the collision of free will and deterministic fate, between nature and morality. Characters will face temptation – a submarine filled with cocaine, an undead lover in the crawlspace, a journey across an exposed ocean floor – and they will have to weigh their desires against the needs and safety of others. The choices these characters make may be selfish or harmful, but each will try to do the best they can with what they have.

Chrysalis is a novel of literary realism that explores how trauma impacts our relationships with others and with ourselves. We follow Ophelia Humber, a shy, intelligent twenty-eight-year-old, on her tumultuous journey to heal from her traumatic childhood and move on to a better life for herself. Still living in her childhood home, Ophelia struggles to come to terms with the death of the love of her life, Jack, and to sever ties with her deceased, emotionally abusive mother, Freya, and her absent, alcoholic father, Doug. For Ophelia, moving on means maintaining a stable job at the local botanical garden, moving into a home of her own, and opening herself up to a romantic relationship. Attempting to reconcile with her past, she works on her mental well-being with Dr. Cameron, a psychiatrist, but underestimates how difficult and frustrating it will be to revisit her past, the very thing she wants to let go of. When Ophelia meets Paul, an amiable, flirtatious musician, she believes she may have found a keeper, until Paul betrays her just as others in her past have done. Her father, having served a fifteen-year prison sentence for DUI manslaughter, tries to reunite with Ophelia to make amends, but she is suspicious of his true intentions and cannot bring herself to forgive him. As Ophelia grapples with absence and identity, longing to be a part of something that she can't quite name, she seems to continuously take one step forward and two steps back.

Set in the world of The Obsidian Kingdom, ruled by four warring factions of magic, this novel examines how we find strength within ourselves. Kyan Batari is a fierce, young magician from the Earth Kingdom. Kyan has lost her family, and her kingdom has lost its power. Raised as an orphan, Kyan finds comfort in ghostly voices that have visited her since she was a child. When Kyan crosses paths with Prince Bryson from an enemy kingdom, she believes that she will have to work to avenge her parents' death for the rest of her life. Bryson is grappling with his own fears about where he came from and what would happen if his forbidden magic were discovered. Kyan and Bryson have more in common than they believed possible when untapped power surfaces in the capital. As Kyan tries to find her place within the Obsidian Kingdom, she must face the ultimate trial of whether to trust her head or her heart.

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The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories is a collection of short stories dealing with themes related to isolation, otherness in the modern world, and suburban dread. These two sets of stories deal with different variations on these themes. In the "Cat Eyes" collection of stories, isolation becomes a more prominent thread. These four stories each center on a different individuals afflicted with having cat eyes in place of normal human eyes. Through the lenses of childhood, adulthood, and someone not afflicted with the cat eye condition, otherness and isolation are explored. Each individual offers a unique glimpse into the lives of these people and how they exist in a world that seeks to other them, often times through force. In "The Neighborhood" collection of stories, the idea of suburban dread comes into full-effect with the inclusion of corpses, skeletons, geysers, and medieval style siege parties. These five stories contrast against the very real lives of the individuals living through these situations. The different families affected by these issues come into contention with the unnamed rules of suburban living as well as their own personal torments made manifest through the oddities that surround them.

This novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy. Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the way of Clarity, a secret organization that wants to place humanity under the rule of a personality-type based master race. The Toys' victory comes at the cost of most of their lives, leaving Felicity to find her own way, with neither stepmother nor fairy godmother.

Jindo is a novel that incorporates drawings, photos, symbols, and comic panels in collaboration with visual artists, Minna Moon and Myungee Jo. In addition to the drawings, the novel integrates Korean folktales and family mythology into the narrative. The hybrid work also weaves elements of speculative fiction, fantasy, realism, horror, and comedy game theory. The novel is told in the first person voice of Korean American, Jindo Cho. In the wake of a nationally televised humiliation, Jindo Cho leaves the world of competitive figure skating to attend state college. When, at the beginning of the semester, his childhood best friend abandons him to join a whites-only fraternity, Delta Kappa, Jindo is left to fend for himself in a surprisingly racist campus. At a party he isn't invited to, Jindo rebels against his past, present, and future, and consumes an unnamed psychedelic compound. After ingesting the unknown compound, he gets thrown into a terrifying trip that he does not remember. Once the trip ends, Jindo relapses in strange ways. Visions show him scenes from the past, present, future, and "other places" as he fights to reconcile reality and meaning in the universe. The novel focuses on how Jindo comes to terms with his past, his dreams, and a traumatic memory he can't quite grasp, all the while exploring the genre of the novel itself, how novels may think, breathe, and evolve in form, and how an experiment in form itself can expose the pressures a character struggles against, in Jindo's case, racial stereotypes, gender norms, and the toxic expectations of a masculinity that encourages detachment and violence. This novel seeks to dismantle stereotypes while also providing readers a wildly entertaining time.