Prince Street PressMay 5, 2015
The role reversal so many families deal with in today's age. Sometimes it's smooth, oftentimes not.
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Overview
The Daddy Diaries is a humorous and poignant novel about a
relationship between a stay at home dad and his two preteen kids. When
his wife goes to work full time in a beach town in Florida, Jay must
acclimate to life in the south. With a rich but stupid older brother, a
lunatic townie friend and a teen son who’s ready to know what a
“threesome” is, Jay’s world is thrown about as far as California to
Florida.
Backstory
I write fiction
based on truth, which allows me to venture right or left regardless of
whether it happened or not. I started with short stories, early 90’s,
and published three in grad school. I saw them as very “close camera”
looks into the intricacies of relationships. The art was in the
capturing of the everyday, just two people on the porch on any given
Tuesday. Not the birthday or Christmas or the day he won the lottery but
an actual Tuesday. Novels have to move quicker and more vastly than
just a snapshot of a porch. But that porch can be a scene within the
novel and if it’s written well it can actually help guide more of the
story. That patchwork of scenes is how novels start for me. With The
Daddy Diaries I was writing actual journal type entries in the first
draft. I am a stay at home dad, which means I’m a part of a growing
number of couples that see it best that mom bring home the bacon while
dad gets down and dirty with the greatly unappreciated tasks of healthy
child rearing. Since my instinct for writing began with these close
camera looks at people, my well was full as far as wanting to write
about my life as a househusband. The Daddy Diaries is the result of two
plus years after those journal entries and building and shaping a
relatable “ride” for parents and the children of those parents.