A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
I’m on Another Nobody podcast hosted by crime author & NYC history buff Travis Myers, talking about The Killing Fields of East New York. His questions came from the perspective of someone born and raised in NYC and who worked for years for the NYPD.
I was also recently interviewed by Matthew Cox for The Saucetown Investor Podcast! Always a bit scary talking to people who are experts about something you wrote about, but this was a pleasure!
I started this blog twenty years ago! I didn’t post a lot at first. It was mostly cat pictures back then (Finney and Buddy, that’s them on the far left and right of the banner), and about my books, of course. The paperback for The Restless Sleep was coming out, and I’d already started on my next book about the former Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University.
I was still doing commentaries for NPR’s All Things Considered at the time. I haven’t done a commentary for them in I don’t know how many years, but publishers keep putting it in my bio. I understand why they do that. I once mentioned my embarrassment about it to my former producer and he was very understanding. They know why publishers do that, too.
I was also still drumming with Manhattan Samba! This is me at the Halloween Parade in 2005, with fellow drummers Ellen and Maddy. Maddy lives in Florida now, but Ellen still drums with Manhattan Samba and I just saw her and the band at the annual Dance Parade. In fact, I’ll include a picture of her now, with the band. Scroll down to see it. That’s her on the far right. Do something in your life that makes you as happy as Ellen is, drumming in the band.
Monday, June 10, 2025 @7pm
KGB Reading Series
85 E. 4th Street
My new book titled The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood came out in January! I’ll be reading with Carrie Courogen, author of Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius, Lucian Truscott, a former Village Voice staff writer, author of Dress Gray, and Jonathan Coleman, author of the true crime classic At Mother’s Request and the biography of basketball titan Jerry West, West by West, My Charmed, Tormented Life.
