Follow me on Substack, where I post excerpts from ongoing novel-writing and other essays on an array of topics.

-the next tale to come....a thriller mystery

My second novel,  Don't turn on the sun is out now!

“Skip dip and diggity doo…god i miss that citronodon brew. But drop it. You know we can’t afford those now the lake’s all empty—who the hell’s gonna stay in New Buffalo and walk around a beach with no water? Podunk town all po dunked. We’ve got glowing coconuts all over the lawn of the Marina we cant touch or eat or sell or fart and the only place anyone can even find orange juice nowadays is Miami! And that sad sack sanitarian sold out the raccoons and now we can’t get any good giardiniera. “

On a gloomy Tuesday in the Autumn following the Arab Spring, 16 year old JAMES Sanstroni was feeling gladiatorius as he drove along the Saint Joseph River in South Bend, Indiana for another day of school. He had an exam and a few assignments due and was worried how he might resolve a fight he had with his girlfriend SALLALOO but as he walked into Saint Joseph’s High School—a former furniture factory owned by a subcontractor of AM General and converted into a school following the 3rd Great Typhoon War of the Pacific—his tummy rumbled, tumbling with the tremendous tricks of a spoiled peach. Slip slip slip and trip trip trip, some friends become enemies and some enemies become friends. Oh there’s TARYN and GRETCHEN and BLANDOR and JOAQUIN and MAGGIE and CARINA , and none of their imaginariatica could have predicted how the sky would strike and dance the circular dance to leave it all behind on that stormy afternoon.

Victims of circumstance, JAMES and company are caught in the middle of a struggle between a multinational conglomerate—the Orlandite Geese who hit it big by using ever-growing piles of nuclear waste in order to grow coconuts and by developing industrial applications for coconut husks—and a federation of raccoons who work symbiotically with the Knights of Columbus, effectively controlling the bulk of the Great Lakes Region’s shipping and freight. The Orlandite Geese are attempting to gain access to valuable Cobalt-60 stockpiles far beneath the Notre Dame Golf Course but the only known safe entrance is guarded by the raccoon federation.

Don’t turn on the sun presents a magical realist portrait of the Farmville-era suburbic Midwest situated in the flyover states of the strongest empire. The narrative explores what it means to tell the truth through JAMES’ ailment juxtaposed with an exploration of the flaws and limitations of financialization, the origin of science as a result of the Medici Renaissance and the death of the universe and mythology, precipitating the demise of fikction. Preternatural forces awaken and then they go about and they fall and sleep to awaken again!

Amazon link:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DMWPGV18 

Substack link: https://giacomocatanzaro.substack.com/p/dont-turn-on-the-sun

Check out my first novel, berkeley boy! berkeley boy is the narrative of a young man, Giacomo, who attends the University of California-Berkeley in hopes of fulfilling his dream of becoming a world-renowned physicist and told from the perspective of Giacomo as if he has trapped you some years later in a bar and tricked you into listening to his stories about his college years.

Giacomo longed to escape his religious upbringing for what he perceived to be a free-thinking utopia. Lonely and distraught in a new place, he eventually finds himself among a wide array of bizarre friends and eccentric foes who impart on him greater life lessons than any professor could. His roommate, Camila, arrives as a straight-edge goodie-two-shoes who doesn't do her laundry and is obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee. Captain is a wannabe real estate agent from Idaho that parrots corporate slogans and is kind as an angel. Toshan is a Marxist whose parents want nothing more than for him to become a doctor. Alongside a satirical portrayal of 2010s Americana and the transformation of Berkeley into a training ground for techies and yuppies, Giacomo and company--most of whom are fellow physicists--bring the mysterious city and the surrounding Bay Area to life as they navigate their new surroundings and interpersonal relationships, with the latter often complicated by alcohol, drugs, and unrequited feelings.