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Death & Dad Rock
You have a year left.
I’ll get the band back together.
Jay is finding out whether it’s actually possible to rebuild the bridges he burned— with his family, his friends, the old band, and the life he kept running from. It took dying for him to realize he’s not the important one.
The people who love him are.
He pushed away his family. His friends. His band. But now he’s running out of time, and the mess he made is coming due.
A fast, funny, mean, and honest story about regret, music, fatherhood, and what happens when a man finally stops running from the people he loves and turns to face everything he spent years avoiding.
Jay wants a second chance, but he knows we only get one.
So he tries to fix the only life he has left before his time is through.
A novel about midlife crisis, forgiveness, being human, and living with terrible choices.
Raw, honest, emotional, and darkly funny.
"We lived together in a run-down townhome in Southeast Portland. Brooklyn neighborhood, 2003. You’d hear the train every night, wonder if the locksmith shop up the street was just a front, and buy beer and cigarettes from Chester’s. I’d lived there for a couple years. I had a roommate that fell in love and had to move out to the country. He moved out, Ben moved in.
There was a basement and a garage, so we had plenty of space for music. By the time Ben moved in I had a drum set, a four-track tape recorder, and all sorts of other instruments. We had everything for a band. That band just couldn’t come together. Why? Drinking, coke, just being a couple assholes. It’s hard to get along when you’re constantly fucking each other over. Finding each other's cash stash and gambling it, or finding the other guy’s bag and using it.
There were four bars within walking the Semaphore, Terry’s, La Carreta, or Club Cabo II. They’re all as good as they sound. Our favorite was Club Cabo II. Strip Club. Dark. Not where anyone starts off…but where people end up. Of the walkable bars, it was also the only one of them serving hard liquor after nine pm. So we go, have gin and tonics. How many gin and tonics? I don’t know.
I decided to go and lose money on video poker. Never a good idea, but my poor decision. Left Ben sitting at the rail while I go dump $60 that I can’t afford to lose in the machine. Ben comes by, pushes a bunch of buttons and speeds up the process of my losing. Get the fuck out of here. I slapped his hands away, he drunkenly walked back to the rail. Now I like to lose my money at my own speed, on my own terms. The guise of control. He came along and fucked that up. So I went back over to the rail where he had sat back down.
‘What the fuck was that?’ No response.
‘Hey man, don’t fucking come over and start hitting shit…’
Didn’t even finish my sentence and he tackled me, had me on the floor of the strip club and was biting me on the face. I couldn’t punch him since his face was latched onto mine. It’s also nearly impossible to find any leverage in this situation. Clamped on my jaw is an advanced move I did not know how to overcome. It was some sort of wrestler move to go from sitting next to me in a chair, to on top of me with teeth sunk into my jawline. I can’t explain the mechanics of it, I just knew I was on the receiving end of something I didn’t want."
I’ll get the band back together.
Jay is finding out whether it’s actually possible to rebuild the bridges he burned— with his family, his friends, the old band, and the life he kept running from. It took dying for him to realize he’s not the important one.
The people who love him are.
He pushed away his family. His friends. His band. But now he’s running out of time, and the mess he made is coming due.
A fast, funny, mean, and honest story about regret, music, fatherhood, and what happens when a man finally stops running from the people he loves and turns to face everything he spent years avoiding.
Jay wants a second chance, but he knows we only get one.
So he tries to fix the only life he has left before his time is through.
A novel about midlife crisis, forgiveness, being human, and living with terrible choices.
Raw, honest, emotional, and darkly funny.
"We lived together in a run-down townhome in Southeast Portland. Brooklyn neighborhood, 2003. You’d hear the train every night, wonder if the locksmith shop up the street was just a front, and buy beer and cigarettes from Chester’s. I’d lived there for a couple years. I had a roommate that fell in love and had to move out to the country. He moved out, Ben moved in.
There was a basement and a garage, so we had plenty of space for music. By the time Ben moved in I had a drum set, a four-track tape recorder, and all sorts of other instruments. We had everything for a band. That band just couldn’t come together. Why? Drinking, coke, just being a couple assholes. It’s hard to get along when you’re constantly fucking each other over. Finding each other's cash stash and gambling it, or finding the other guy’s bag and using it.
There were four bars within walking the Semaphore, Terry’s, La Carreta, or Club Cabo II. They’re all as good as they sound. Our favorite was Club Cabo II. Strip Club. Dark. Not where anyone starts off…but where people end up. Of the walkable bars, it was also the only one of them serving hard liquor after nine pm. So we go, have gin and tonics. How many gin and tonics? I don’t know.
I decided to go and lose money on video poker. Never a good idea, but my poor decision. Left Ben sitting at the rail while I go dump $60 that I can’t afford to lose in the machine. Ben comes by, pushes a bunch of buttons and speeds up the process of my losing. Get the fuck out of here. I slapped his hands away, he drunkenly walked back to the rail. Now I like to lose my money at my own speed, on my own terms. The guise of control. He came along and fucked that up. So I went back over to the rail where he had sat back down.
‘What the fuck was that?’ No response.
‘Hey man, don’t fucking come over and start hitting shit…’
Didn’t even finish my sentence and he tackled me, had me on the floor of the strip club and was biting me on the face. I couldn’t punch him since his face was latched onto mine. It’s also nearly impossible to find any leverage in this situation. Clamped on my jaw is an advanced move I did not know how to overcome. It was some sort of wrestler move to go from sitting next to me in a chair, to on top of me with teeth sunk into my jawline. I can’t explain the mechanics of it, I just knew I was on the receiving end of something I didn’t want."
219 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 15, 2025
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