I published my first novel, “Pistonhead,” in February 2009. It sold well and garnered rave reviews from both music publications (we still had such things back then) and book bloggers.

Heading into its 13th year, it’s still going strong–and the story is as relevant as ever! The book unfolds over a few weeks in the life of a young man named Charlie Sinclair. He plays guitar in Pistonhead, a Boston-based rock band. He’s not a rock star. The band is not well known and Charlie still has a day job at Evergreen Software, where–despite being a low-wage temp–he supervises an assembly line of developmentally challenged workers.

Charlie faces many personal obstacles. The lead singer of the band has a drug problem. Evergreen Software may close its factory and move overseas. The girl Charlie likes–a fellow employee, Lisa–seems to have a steady boyfriend. Charlie’s family, living up the coast in Beverly, ridicules him. But most of all, Charlie is deeply restless and unsatisfied.

When tragedy strikes, Charlie must re-assess his life–and he gets help from an unexpected source.

“As a novel, Pistonhead is an odd duck,” wrote Francis DiMenno in THE NOISE: ROCK AROUND BOSTON. “It’s not a strictly literary work (but who would want that, anyway?). It’s not an exploitative genre exercise (which would be of no lasting, or of barely even more than ephemeral, value). Rather, it’s cross between a journalistic expose of Entertainment Babylon and a quasi-documentary account of a rock ‘n’ roll musician–one with a great many very thinly disguised music business and local color flourishes. I read it in one sitting. It was that kind of book.”