I’ve been spending summers in the East End of Long Island, also known as the Hamptons, since 1992. And in all that time there I’ve seen many, many changes, but one thing has remained the same: my belief that the Hamptons is the Great Equalizer. No matter how rich or poor you are, a celebrity, money manager, landscaper, farmer, you’re all stuck in the same horrible traffic.

You may be driving to your private jet, waiting for you at East Hampton airport, or trying to get back home to Riverhead or mid-island. Still the same traffic. You may be a finance guy cursing the $100 dollar a plate lunch that just isn’t that great, or a contractor cursing the $15 egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. Relatively to your wealth, you’re suffering about the same.

And the main thing I’ve learned: everyone there is a slave to someone else. The locals sell themselves to the summer people for money, The finance guys are slaves to their bosses, who are slaves to their clients, etc. Everyone’s stressed and overextended.

And that led to me, last summer, thinking up the idea for my book: Slavehampton Book 1: Arrivals. In it I follow a wealthy family trying hard to achieve status, despite building a house on the wrong side of the highway; a young woman, Erin, who makes some bad choices and winds up being sold to that family; a young man from Germany who tries his luck at a summer job, among others.

Add in a healthy dose of sci-fi and mystery, cause it’s actually quite boring there in real life, and you get my latest effort.

I hope you get a chance to read it, and if you do, let me know what works, what doesn’t. This is the first book in the series, with many more to come.

Cheers,
Erik