Where Ordinary is Never Normal
I’m a versatile writer, who has published 10+ books across non-fiction (humor, memoir, self-help) and fiction (upmarket, historical, crime, detective, satire, stage play, and middle-grade), all with fast-paced wit, dark humor, and periods of moving and profound humanity.
Non-Fiction Books
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Certified 6.7
About: Certified 6.7 is a wildly irreverent celebration of life in the middle—for everyone who has ever looked in the mirror, checked their bank account, surveyed their dating prospects, or felt their knees crack getting out of bed and realized they might not be a perfect ten.
Through outrageous observations on beauty, aging, relationships, dad bods, short kings, social media, modern dating, parenthood, masculinity, and the absurd pressures of contemporary life, Mike Ross makes the case that being average may actually be the sweet spot.
With sharp satire, self-deprecating humor, and absolutely no interest in political correctness, Certified 6.7 asks why everyone is so desperate to be exceptional when most of us are happily somewhere in the middle—and reminds readers that sometimes the best thing you can do is embrace your “middity,” stop keeping score, and enjoy the ride.Style: Light and Breezy Comedy Book
Pages: 268
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Hot Girls Don't Poop
About: Hot Girls Don’t Poop is an unapologetically irreverent look at the ridiculous myths, double standards, and psychological warfare that shape modern dating and relationships.
Starting with one profoundly stupid question — do hot girls actually poop? — comedian Mike Ross dives headfirst into our obsession with perfection, the baffling differences between men and women, dating apps, sliding into DMs, first-date etiquette, monogamy, smartphones, attraction, and all the strange little rules people invent while trying to find someone they can tolerate for more than a few hours.
Beneath the absurdity is a surprisingly simple idea: we’ve forgot what makes us human. Hot Girls Don’t Poop takes aim at nearly everyone — and ultimately asks whether dating might be a whole lot easier if we stopped searching for perfection and learned to laugh instead.Style: Light and Breezy Comedy Book
Pages: 272
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The Art of Being Negative-Negative
About: The Art of Being Negative-Negative is a wildly inappropriate parody of the modern self-help book, narrated by an relentlessly upbeat man who believes there is a positive side to absolutely everything.
Armed with dubious science, absurd charts, and questionable life lessons, Mike Ross sets out to cure the world of negativity one offensive analogy at a time. Beneath the ridiculous advice and deliberately juvenile artwork, however, sits a strangely sincere idea: happiness may have less to do with getting everything you want, than learning to recognize what is already good in front of you.
Part satire, part fake motivational manifesto, and part illustrated descent into one man’s relentlessly positive madness, The Art of Being Negative-Negative is self-help for anyone who thinks self-help has gotten a little too serious.
Style: Comedic Self-Help Book
Pages: 300
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Hotel Hell
About: When comedian Mike Ross first shows up to federal prison, he expects to be stuck with violent, scheming, and conniving criminals. Instead, he finds an eclectic and often hilarious mishmash of addicts, outcasts, and dysfunctional staff. He soon understands why it has earned its nickname - Hotel Hell.
At the center of it all is his bunkie, Crazy Bill - a toothless meth addicted former factory worker - whose humor, honor, and humanity make him impossible to forget. As their unlikely friendship deepens, Mike Ross discovers that prison is less a story about crime, than about people.
Funny, moving, and deeply American, Hotel Hell explores friendship, class, addiction, and the men society so-often chooses to leave behind.Style: Memoir with a Comedic Touch
Pages: 310
Fiction Books
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Do Castles Ever Weep?
About: Do Castles Ever Weep? is a wickedly funny detective comedy about murder, reinvention, and the secrets buried beneath the manicured lawns of a South Florida retirement paradise.
When celebrity private investigator Matthew Mallet—part sleuth, part chef, part self-appointed cultural philosopher—is called to The Castles after the suspicious death of Bobby Carnale, he is pulled into a world of feuding councils, swingers, schemers, rival queens, and increasingly dangerous secrets.
As the case deepens, Matthew discovers that the women at the center of the community may be hiding far more than gossip—and that the truth behind Bobby’s death is tangled up with a private underground world someone was desperate to protect.
Raunchy, satirical, fast-paced, and packed with twists, Do Castles Ever Weep? is a murder mystery about what really happens behind closed doors when everyone has something to hide.
Style: Detective Fiction, Dark Comedy
Pages: 325
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The Icebox
About: Set in 1930s Mississippi, The Icebox follows Jo-Anne Smith, a beautiful, restless young Southern woman whose seemingly charmed life in the small town of Whisper Lake begins to unravel when ambition, forbidden desire, politics, and forces she barely understands collide.
Known for her famous Lemon Icebox Pie and married to one of the most powerful men in the region, Jo-Anne is drawn into the orbit of the mysterious and dangerously charismatic Nathan Palachuk, a newcomer whose secrets reach far beyond their sleepy town. As whispers become betrayals and private passions become public scandals, Jo-Anne finds herself swept into a world of political intrigue, hidden identities, violence, and increasingly surreal visions that blur the line between memory and reality.
Told in Jo-Anne’s distinctive Southern voice, The Icebox is a darkly comic historical drama about love, power, reinvention, and the dangerous price of becoming more than the world ever expected you to be.
Style: Upmarket Fiction, Dark Comedy
Pages: 368
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That's Wack Jack
About: That’s Wack Jack is a wildly irreverent crime comedy about two men whose lives seem to have nothing in common—until fate, bad judgment, and a spectacularly stupid prison escape prove otherwise.
Jackie Chan carries the scars of a childhood shaped by hardship, abandonment, and betrayal, while Method Man is a washed-up factory worker turned hustler whose own life has been derailed by loss, addiction, and one terrible decision after another. Their stories unfold on separate tracks before colliding inside a Pennsylvania federal prison camp, where an unlikely friendship becomes the one thing neither man knew he needed.
What follows is a chaotic road trip of stolen cars, drugs, family ghosts, old enemies, ridiculous schemes, and increasingly absurd disasters—but beneath the insanity is something much simpler and more enduring: two broken men learning to trust someone again.
Raunchy, outrageous, and unexpectedly heartfelt, That’s Wack Jack is ultimately a story about how friendship can survive almost anything—even prison, betrayal, disaster, and the two idiots at the center of it all.Style: Crime Fiction, Comedy
Pages: 310
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The Name is Bill Blane
About: The Name Is Bill Blane is a sweeping, darkly comic work of historical fiction told through the larger-than-life voice of a man who has spent his entire life turning himself into a legend.
Born Reginald Middlebrook in England at the dawn of the twentieth century, Bill Blane claws his way from a rough childhood and the vaudeville stage to Hollywood fame, wartime heroics, scandalous romances, broken marriages, brushes with royalty, and a career built as much on reinvention as talent. Along the way, he recounts his triumphs and disasters with swagger, vanity, wit, and selective memory, blurring the line between fact and self-created myth as the world changes around him.
But every spotlight casts a shadow, and the higher Bill rises, the more his carefully constructed identity begins to conceal the people, choices, and consequences left behind.Spanning decades of war, entertainment, love, ambition, and loss, The Name Is Bill Blane is ultimately a story about fame, identity, and the unsettling possibility that the life we build for ourselves may one day turn around and confront us.
Style: Historical Fiction, Dark Comedy
Pages: 404
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Get the Key to the Banker
About: Get the Key to the Banker is a fast-moving middle-grade adventure about curiosity, friendship, and courage.
Sandy Sugarman, his older sister Sassy, their brilliant-but-bumbling friend Potts, easygoing Jay-Jay, and their dodo Miss Petey live in a mysterious city high above the clouds, where children never grow old, machines provide everything they need, and strange lights called The Fires fill the night sky.
But when Miss Petey coughs up an ancient key and a cryptic message commanding them to GET THE KEY TO THE BANKER, the children are launched on a journey with bizarre clues that challenge everything they thought they knew about their home—and themselves.
Packed with humor, mystery, science, sibling rivalry, and big questions about truth, freedom, family, and growing up, Get the Key to the Banker is an imaginative adventure for young readers who like their fantasy funny, their mysteries weird, and their heroes just a little bit ridiculous.Style: Middle Grade Fantasy
Pages: 389
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The Orb and The Obs
About: The Orb and the Obs is a sharp, darkly comic satire about fear, conformity, power, and what happens when an entire society is taught not to trust its own eyes. In the seemingly perfect village of Fove, every citizen is raised to fear the mysterious Orb in the sky and to obey the High Order that promises protection through the wearing of uncomfortable black “Obs,” endless Edicts, mandatory rituals, and unquestioned tribute.
Young Raisin has always tried to believe what he is told, but small contradictions begin to pile up: leaders who do not follow their own rules, history that does not quite add up, a missing father, and a system that seems to grow more powerful the more frightened everyone becomes. As Raisin starts asking the questions no one else wants asked, his search for the truth threatens friendships, family, and the institutions that have governed Fove for generations.
Funny, strange, and increasingly unsettling, The Orb and the Obs is an allegorical tale about propaganda, groupthink, manufactured crisis, and the dangerous comfort of surrendering freedom in exchange for the promise of safety—while asking one deceptively simple question: what if the thing everyone fears was never the real threat at all?
Style: Satirical Novella
Pages: 182
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The Bluefooted Bobby: A Play in Three Acts
About: Hollywood, 1975. When a mysterious young man crashes—literally—into the life of fast-talking agent, he’s pulled into a secret late-night poker game with some of the biggest names in show business. What begins as a surreal brush with celebrity quickly becomes something stranger, darker, and far more personal.
The Bluefooted Bobby is a fast-moving dark comedy about fame, friendship, ego, mortality, and the men behind the punchlines. Packed with old-school show-business swagger, outrageous banter, and unexpected tenderness, this three-act play peels back the glamour of Hollywood to reveal the loneliness, loyalty, and desperation underneath.
What happens when the joke is over, the room goes quiet, and all that’s left is the truth?