Books

These are the four books that I have indie-published (self-published).

Less and Less is more a memoir about the effect of being a minimalist on my personal and romantic life, but there is also information about the minimalist mindset generally, as well as the opposite: why do hoarders, collectors, and most people have so much difficulty simply getting rid of things?

The Killing Type is part regular mystery novel, and part parody of a mystery novel. I remember that I had an idea for whodunnit in my mystery, and I read exactly one mystery novel for let's call it "research": P Is for Peril by Sue Grafton, which I didn't like very much and thought I could at least tell a story and reveal the killer at the end before it had become obvious to too many readers.

Greg Giraldo is a fully researched biography of one of my favourite stand-up comedians. The idea for the book came from Matt Balaker, and then one night when I was at business dinner in Toronto at the former Maple Leaf Gardens, he texted me and asked me if I wanted to be the co-writer. For more details about the idea, planning, writing, and launching of the book (in New York City), please see here.

In order to do that project I had to put the writing of My Sam Johnson on hold for a few years, but I did end up finishing and publishing it. Again, it's a fully researched book, and relies on the much more in-depth research by Johnson scholars, but as the subtitle states, the book is for general readers, people who might have heard of Sam, read anecdotes, or known that he wrote the first modern dictionary of English.