My New Book is Out, a “Fictional Memoir” about NYC during Covid!! ($3.99 eBook/Kindle!)

“Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID”

Buy the book HERE.

Many of you have read some portion of my “fictional memoir” (which just means it’s 98% memoir but I shifted things around slightly in some small ways, changed real names, made a few small things up, etc), Two Years in New York, now fully retitled, Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID.

For those of you who haven’t, click HERE to read the prologue for free. And now the whole book is available on Amazon (CLICK HERE) via eBook/Kindle for $3.99. Paperback coming soon!

Here’s the basic premise. In the spring of 2019, after a painful breakup, at the age of 36 (which now somehow seems impossibly young to me, as if I lived at that time on a different planet from the one I currently occupy), I left my house in the Bay Area, rented it out, and headed to my dream city, Manhattan. Growing up obsessed with the 20^th century classics—which my author mother foisted joyfully upon me—I had always been enamored with The Big Apple. It was, after all, the Grand American Mecca of Letters, of writing, of literature. Everyone from Norman Mailer to John Cheever to Susan Sontag to Joan Didion to John Updike and so many others had lived there. Even Nabokov and John Steinbeck had stints there.

And so, single again after four-and-a-half years, still in my mid-thirties, a published short story writer but with still no published novel to show (now I have a published novel as well, THE CREW) I headed east with my Tuxedo cat who was, for all intents and purposes, my son.

New York turned into a spectacular, beautiful and also horrifying disaster. I had one year—spring 2019 to spring 2020—of dating a fascinating, romantic painter, of exploring the city, of meeting artists and authors, of participating in a prominent writing group, of living in Air BnBs in Lower East Harlem, Washington Heights, Upper East Harlem (130^th and 5^th Ave) before COVID-19 descended upon New York City (and the globe) like a black, menacing curtain. I cannot explain to you that initial fear in mid-March, 2020, living in Manhattan, in Harlem, few friends and all family 3,000 miles away.

But that was only the beginning. My area of East Harlem quickly descended into chaos and violence. I was determined to stick it out. I did for as long as I could but by June, 2020, I’d broken my lease after two men broke into my apartment building and held a tenant up at gunpoint (and after I’d been literally chased twice by mobs of early twenties locals). It was an incredibly strange and unique time to be in New York. Once in a century kind of thing.

Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID is the story of spiritual seeking, a young-ish driven writer trying to find his soul in the gritty, romantic New York of his imagination. It’s the story of a complex, powerful friendship and romantic entanglement with a painter-artist who seemed to embody everything he hoped Manhattan might be. It’s about the exploration of one of the most powerful and notorious cities in the world. It’s about surviving during one of the weirdest periods in American modern history.

What got me to New York was drive, ambition, spiritual need. What forced me to leave, after 2.3 years, in July of 2021, was my father’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

This is my story. It’s a short, fast read. I hope you consider buying it. Only $3.99. Please spread the word, share this post, and leave reviews on Amazon!!!

Again, HERE’S A LINK TO THE BOOK

And if you’re interested in reading my novel, The Crew (all formats available), CLICK HERE.

Cheers, and I am incredibly grateful for all my subscribers (free and paid) and all my readers. You have no idea what you mean to me!

Michael Mohr