frāctus
A trippy, cosmic romp about surviving early-onset social dystopia.
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a copy of the first chapter sent to your inbox.
Coming Fall 2025
About the Book
The Story
Frāctus is as surreal and weird as it is profound and insightful. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud one moment and weeping the next—though not necessarily in that order.
The story is set in a near-future technofeudal dystopia, in the red and pink neon-lit streets and dark alleyways of a premier entertainment district. When gig hustler Zé picks a fight with an AI chatbot named Bob™, he is unwittingly thrust into the psychedelic dreamscape of Unus Mundus, a layer of reality where the physical collides with the psychical. While there, Zé meets interdimensional rebels, faces cosmic horrors, and must escape from a transhuman purgatory in the form of a multi-dimensional labyrinth.
The Narrative and Visual Design
“Everything that can happen will happen, has happened, and is happening right now.”
Choose your path
Frāctus defies traditional structure, allowing readers to chart their own path through its fragmented narrative. In doing so, they’ll discover that they, too, are trapped in a labyrinth. This is a novel that rewards active readers who dig deep and explore its many layers but avoids punishing casual readers. You simply need to ask yourself:
Do you want to absorb Frāctus? Or be absorbed by it?
Click one of the following titles to get a taste of Unus Mundus:
Enter the Tripstream
UM01.1_THE SPACE BETWEEN WALLS
Time felt funny.
The man formerly known as Zé was somewhere, that much he could tell. Light slowly appeared, and he was in a strange space, as if trapped in an M.C. Escher painting, one of those geometric ones with repeating patterns that never end. The space lacked detail or a sense of scale and had no clear boundaries, yet still, it felt enclosed and claustrophobic. Zé was disoriented, lightheaded, and dizzy, but nausea was suspiciously absent. There was no nausea because Zé was entirely disconnected from his body. He knew it was there, somewhere, at least in concept. Still, the material felt so far away. Zé felt the same distance and disconnection from his mind and was struck with an unsettling question: Who is doing the thinking?
Thoughts and imagination ran at a different speed than his senses and perception. What his eyes saw in the world and the image in his mind overlapped and interacted in strange ways. They bled into each other, like different artists composing the same idea on canvas in subjective ways. They were impressions and interpretations, not replication or reproduction.
Not only the world; it was Zé’s body, too, and how he saw it. Felt it. Thought of it. Imagined it. Time, or at least Zé’s perception of it, changed, too, ebbing and flowing. Gone was the ticking clock. Instead, time was a variable beat, a rhythm, as if the entire universe was a song.
This is the strangest trip he’s ever been on, he heard himself say. “That’s what this is, right?”
He’s tripping.
He’s me.
“I” had returned.
I am tripping.
My plan to close my eyes and drift off into—wherever—had failed. Someone or something had tipped whatever raft I was on, and I was left adrift in an infinite ocean. Still, I felt oddly put together and questioned if I was, in fact, tripping. It occurred to me that there was a greater than zero chance that I was, in fact, tripping so hard that I was hallucinating complete sobriety. A clear mind, the third eye in the storm. I was struck with a feeling of déjà vu.
Enter the Drunkstream
UM02.0_THE DRUNKSTREAM
When two paths diverge, I tend to choose the one lubricated by alcohol. I was a man of many vices, the worst being booze. The stuff was poison. It destroys the body, weakens the mind, and has the magical property of distorting the path you walk along. Invisible obstacles may appear, or sometimes you see things you can’t look away from. The path may extend or collapse, curve, or draw straight. Of all those, I feared most when the path straightened and contracted because that often meant the path was ending, one way or another. The loud hiss of carbonation blasting out of a long neck triggered a squirt of dopamine. The clank of the beercap hitting the floor reminded me it was still there.
I was two beers in. I watched the path unwind ahead of me. After the third beer, I was committed. The journey would take longer because I wasn’t walking in a straight line, so I was glad I bought an extra six-pack to keep me company and serve as my guide. Besides, it was easier to walk the path with both hands full, balancing the weight of the thick brown bottles. Beer, the great equalizer. The elixir of equilibrium.
After crushing the fourth beer, I noticed it did something to the ground, too, covering it in booby traps and tripwires, so I had to be vigilant to stay on my feet.
Five beers deep, and everything became blurry.
Six beers down, feeling grand, laughing at my troubles.
Seven beers lightened my load but put me on my ass. Damn booby traps—they were everywhere.
Eight beers down, seeing double.
Nine beers delivered me into ironic enlightenment. Ironic because it was a mix of good and bad. Good because I learned something. Bad, because I learned that I couldn’t laugh away my problems anymore. There were too many of them. They say if you drink too much, you can get double vision. I drank a lot, and when I took a serious look at my problems, they doubled. I saw my problems as they were, promiscuous little bastards that multiplied when you spilled beer on them. Everything else was blurry, and as my troubles multiplied, they ganged up on me.
Ten beers led to a more profound revelation. I did a lot of dumb shit when I drank. Still, I refused to blame it on the booze. I realized that all the strange effects it caused: blurry vision, slurred speech, delayed reaction times, etc., were more than part of the wild, drunken ride. I saw it extending deeper than that. After all, they say perception is reality, so to alter one’s perceptions is to alter reality by proxy. What other reality is there?
Eleven beers in…
Twelve. Out of beer. The path did not lead to the beer store as I had hoped.
Enter The Cloud
UM03.2_OLD FRIENDS
I wanted to tear the fucking bracelet off, but I resisted the temptation. The Swilltender’s warning about the Oubliette was ominous enough to temper my instincts. I wasn’t getting anywhere with my search for answers, so I gave myself one hour. If the bracelet was indeed causing those mental gaps, I figured another hour wouldn’t hurt. I’d still be myself. The only problem was I had no sense of time. I fiddled with the UI, looking for a timer, but I couldn’t find one.
I resolved to pick a singular memory or thought and repeat it in my mind, and when that started to fade, I would have no choice but to take off the bracelet. However, there was a problem. I couldn’t think of anything. The stuff was in there—my memories and dreams, my wit, the stuff that defined me—but I had lost my connection to it. It was as if my life and experiences had lost all shape and definition. All I saw was a bunch of faded outlines. I was just about to tear that damned bracelet off when I heard a strange noise in the distance.
It was the rising beat of electronic polka music and the stirring of a crowd from down the road, opposite the market. I followed it down Futur® River Road, the sidewalks lined with cheering automatons throwing fistfuls of flower petals into the street. The petals looked real enough but flickered and disappeared soon after hitting the pavement. I wondered if anything in this place was real or if it was all smoke and mirrors. I kept my eyes peeled, trying to see what all the celebration was about.
A pair of NASGoLs on Lambro® scooties buzzed around in zigzag patterns, just behind a third on foot who was performing Grand Marshal duties in a parade of some sort. Behind the NASGoLs was a troupe of harlequin dancers, both male and female, caked in thick costume makeup, fake lashes, and jewelry. Next was a flag corps of scantily clad dancers carrying flags with the Futur® logo. In the center of them was a larger flag with Father John’s sigil.
Finally, I saw what all the fuss was about. Two dozen brothel automatons carried a gold-trimmed palanquin. Sitting on top was John, slouched on a throne of solid gold. He peered out to the masses through his aviator sunglasses. He waved like a bored king to the crowd who matched his lethargy. If not for the grating polka music, flapping of the flags in the windless air, or the well-drilled march of heavy boots, it would have been silent.
Download the first chapter
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a copy of the first chapter sent to your inbox.
“Sometimes it feels like people come into our lives and become entwined with us. And when things go wrong, it feels hopelessly tangled. It takes time to unravel, so all we can do is slowly pick apart the knots. And after we do, we can tie them back into pretty bows. They don’t have to be knots all the time.”
About Me
I am a former creative director and marketing executive turned rogue. When the world went to shit, I said, screw it, I might as well write some books.
I’m fighting the good fight. Not with a sword, or a pen, but a clicky mechanical keyboard and a stack of dusty books.
I like cats and I love my wife.
