As of yesterday, the release of my third novel, “Lava Lamp,” went from the insurmountable measure of time to something more tangible and scary. We are officially days away from seeing my latest escape my hands and enter the public sphere. It becomes something that I share with you and, I hope, meets your approval. It’s always nerve-racking when someone puts that much time into a work and then finds themselves on the other side, awaiting scrutiny of the thumbs up or down that previous generations bestowed on our consciousness. Given how personal this ultimately is, I’m especially nervous to see if this escapes my pre-visioned belief that it’ll just be another work sitting in the digital carts of major retailers.
Another reason is that this is the first proper narrative I’ve crafted since 2020. I technically wrote “Downtime” during the lockdown days, but even that was rolling on the fumes of goodwill I still had from “the before times.” It was a novel that I basically rushed into production following “Apples & Chainsaws” because I wanted to see if I could do something more streamlined after creating what was essentially “a moratorium on my twenties” that felt closer to a scrapbook via HBO ensemble comedy than a conventional narrative. While I’ve come to realize that part of my drive for writing has been to delve into the moment and capture an emotional self-awareness, “Downtime” was a necessary departure.
Even then, I think “Lava Lamp” feels strange because of how my journey with “Downtime” ended in 2021. Somewhere in the editing process, I officially began what I’ll politely call a mental breakdown while entering the worst depression of my life. For as much as writing was my escape from the darkness, my self-appointed obligations were frustrating. I don’t know how much it shows, but in my mind, “Downtime” is a grammatical mess because I just didn’t have the focus to make something as “tight” or “streamlined” as I had envisioned. Given that this was around the same time that I had given up writing for The Oscar Buzz because I had an identity crisis and questioned why we were celebrating art during such a lousy time, there was a lot of hopelessness – a fact made ironic by “Downtime” essentially being my manifesto for being unified during a terrible administration.
To be clear, I don’t hate “Downtime” or have some aversion to potentially revisiting it. However, that’s where my mind sits coming into Sunday’s release of “Lava Lamp.” Along with my short story collection “Esoteric Shapes” being released at the start of a pandemic (on April Fool’s Day, no less), there’s been this real sense of failure. Add in any questioning of how I even have the motivation to release another novel even now, and you get where my headspace has been since the pandemic came like a tsunami and left me particularly unsure of what I want to do with my future. Write, yes. But write what?
The novel you are about to read comes from a place of inner turmoil that has only recently subsided in the past few months. While each year has found the light shining brighter and brighter, I found that this only happened after engaging with a lot of difficult emotions. Part of me mourns the fact that I can’t fully relate to the angst that I’ve thrown on the page because, a silly as it sounds, writing everything down has put a lot into context. It has taken away the sting and forced me to confront the truth from what I perceive to be projection. In the drafting stages, there was a difficulty in sitting with those thoughts because they were still amorphous and lacking total clarity. Even then, I think it hurt because I needed to hold onto the framework in my head so that it would be as precise on the page as my capabilities would allow.
It led to a lot of fraught nights made worse by the sense that everyone had moved on from Covid-19 protocols (even a president who otherwise seemed empathetic at the time) while I carried that fear. Then again, I would contract it three times between 2022 and 2024, feeling more miserable each time out. In some sense, the “sick days” are also when I’m mentally the worst. I worry that my vibrancy will be taken away, that I will contract memory loss or become asthmatic in ways that hold me back. I’m someone who prides themselves on having a fast walking pace. I couldn’t imagine slowing down.
To be clear, the entire 2020s has been a confusing mess of a period, and one that I’m not really sure has amounted to much but chaos and division. Maybe it shared my sense of disappointment that right at the dawn of a new decade, there was a reminder of mortality that held us back. Suddenly, the sarcastic “worst year ever” rhetoric was becoming serious. We lost millions to a once uncontrollable virus. I would tune in to the news and see nurses crying alongside tidbits that hospitals were reaching 0% capacity. My grandfather was forced to die alone because, upon his final hospital visit, he contracted the virus and had to be quarantined.
As I reached my 35th birthday last year, my big revelation was that a big reason this period has been so uncomfortable was because of how fixated I was on death. There was also a need to preserve legacies and never forget what came before. As the government takes a federal platform that suggests everything you know is wrong, it feels more important than ever to remember “the before times.” I’m scared of not knowing the innocence, even of 2018, though, to be honest, I mourn the last bastion of millennial naivety that was 2015 even more. Knowing that we’re a decade removed from that turning point makes me realize how much is lost both in a mortal sense, but also in a theological one. Our whole sense of self has changed, and I have been eagerly trying to remember what matters in all of this.
In all honesty, “Lava Lamp” was actually supposed to come out sometime in early 2024. Once you read the text and understand I’m approaching my 36th birthday this July, I hope you’ll understand. Another aspect of my writing is that the deadlines have been equally defined by a need to end as it was to reflect the end of a period. If “Apples & Chainsaws” symbolized the final days of my 20s, “Lava Lamp” is an attempt to assess my early 30s. It made more sense to do it before the middle point, but, funnily enough, life interfered. I got my B.A. from Cal State Long Beach. I’ve actively tried to put myself in social situations. I basically have been attempting to enjoy life in ways I hadn’t when I first put a pen to my composition notebook and… to be completely honest… this may be the most in the moment I’ve ever been. Small accomplishments provide lingering hope. For whatever nonsense is happening on the interwebs, I at least have these small contributions to remember positively.
In fairness, “Lava Lamp” may be my first novel in four years, but I have done plenty to stay busy. My goal of doing small and sometimes experimental short stories has found me working through stray ideas that may or may not appear in my larger work. While the output has dwindled over the years, it remains a motivator alongside regular publications on The Memory Tourist in hopes of getting to a greater sense of purpose. To me, it all fits into the portfolio. This is my contribution to the moment. Not all of it is great, but I hope you have enough sense of me to understand and hopefully find interest in what I say. In general, the past five years have been the most proud I have collectively been of my writing on a year-to-year basis.
There is a fun irony in knowing that my “five-year plan” looked a lot different coming out of “Downtime.” It had to be a phase of mania because I had written on Twitter in 2021 that I had intended to release two short story compilations and another novel within the next three years. Never mind that I hadn’t really conceived of that novel or that it takes me on average a year (or more) to fully crack a narrative. I had a vision to stay productive that sounded a lot more appealing before I suffered the worst burnout of my life. Had it not been for school where my hard work at least produced results that motivated me, I’m sure it would’ve been a complete collapse of self-esteem. Instead, the creative writing classes gradually became a place to experiment. Ironically, each one features a story about a loved one suffering either death or suicide. What I found was a need to go deeper. Add insult to injury, one of my first teachers (during The Zoom Era) had just lost his dad who, by a bizarre turn of luck, I had seen give a poetry reading at my high school 13 years prior where he ended by performing a bell hop. Not to be outdone, one of my final teachers, Robert Guffey, would appear on WTF with Marc Maron the day after I completed my final college course. The world has a funny sense of humor sometimes.
As someone who forces themselves to be an optimist, it has been difficult to fully develop a meaningful tone. How does one rebuild after your last two paperbacks were released in times of harsh self-criticism? The good and bad of it is that I can’t fully remember that time that well. My connection to the writing process has faded and, in its place, is this largely ambiguous novel that feels detached from who I am now. What terrifies me in this stage of editing “Lava Lamp” is that I’m experiencing it again. The only difference is that my pride in molding this is a lot stronger. It conveys everything that I would want to say about the past four years, albeit in ways that wound up being more prescient than they were when I conceived it.
So yes, this will be a dark novel full of uncomfortable scenes. I don’t think it’s possible to fully remove the element of depression from its structure. With that said, my efforts to mold a “realistic” overtone of everyday life means it’s also full of humor and small interactions that I hope balance everything in ways that feel grounded. It’s also very playful because, to me, writing should be interactive. It’s a conversation with the writer and, frankly, I resent the death of the author motif. You don’t have to like what they say, but you have to respect their intentions at least in passing. To me, “Lava Lamp” is about recognizing our humanity and ability to love. To me, this is about developing something akin to “a real emotion.” If I have one criticism about “Downtime,” it’s my worry that it might’ve not seemed genuine enough, and I wanted to remedy that.
It's maybe why I’ve been obsessed with records that dig into deep recesses. I’m thinking of Christine and the Queen’s “Paranoia, Angels, True Love” and The Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow” (which, funnily enough, is releasing its film version two days before my novel). I promise that I also like music not produced by Mike Dean. Key among them was Ethel Cain’s “Preacher’s Daughter,” which changed my life. The first time I heard “House in Nebraska” was a shattering experience of emotion that made me realize that I needed to actually try. I could fail and maybe do something stupid – which wouldn’t be the first time for my novels – but I needed to put my stake in the ground and say, “THIS is what I wanted to say in my early 30s.”
There is a joy unto itself in production, and if nothing comes of the next phase of “Lava Lamp,” it will be that I have said what I needed to to get away from who I was. I was able to express my distress in a creative manner that fulfilled my drive as a human. There’s still a lot of greater existential questions around what I want to do with my remaining years on Earth, but for now there’s something ethereal about pressing “Submit” on the digital stores and knowing that, no matter what, my effort exists somewhere in the world. It’s hard to fully convey, but up until the past week, it was easy to believe that “the worst” could happen, and nobody knew what I had been up to. They would’ve seen me out in public, but they wouldn’t see a work that I hope outlives me, providing some sense of how I saw the world.
Because that’s what I want to do as a writer. In an age where I’ve been keen on documentation as a larger cultural service, I hope that I’ve provided enough to show my progress and the ways I’ve changed over time. I probably come across as insufferable sometimes, and my regrets are many, but it has all come together to create a larger vision.
For as much as I worry about not being able to tap into that deep recess again, I’m grateful to not be there anymore. I can only say that it took years to reach a peaceful state. Everyone’s coping mechanism will be different, but I do encourage everyone to try and express themselves in a manner that says, “This is me!” Have something to look back on and recognize that you progressed or had a period of very weird creativity. Do something for yourself. It may be flawed or downright disastrous, but so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, you’ll find that experience breeds motivation. It creates a different worldview and makes so much of life seem greater than it would if you took the easy route.
At the moment, I am proud to say that my next novel (temporarily titled Novel4) is being crafted as we speak. It’s still a long way from the finish line, but I hope it will find me moving in a more optimistic direction and reflect on what the end of the decade feels like. I won’t be saying too much about what I’m envisioning for the project, but I will say that I’ve been listening to music that gets me in the mood, which includes The Violent Femmes, Stan Getz, and Jane Remover. If you can figure out the tone off of those three, then I might send you a free copy around 2028 or 29… whenever things come together.
For now, I breathe a sigh of relief to know that this is the first time since 2019 that I have reached the finish line for a novel and have immense pride for what’s to come. If nothing else, I am scared because it takes some of my biggest swings. While not autobiographical, it feels personal and reflects where I was in 2021. Some of the intensity has worn off, so I hope I’ve maintained its strengths for the reader. For now, I have to just see how this goes. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck. Funnily enough, I’ll be out at a county fair most of the day, so I’ll be celebrating in my own way. I didn’t plan it. It sort of just happened. That’s the best way a lot of this could go.
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