“A diseased girl, a drunk, a crazy woman, and a fool set sail.”
— Thea Ramsey, from her notebook (1982)
This is the second book of my memoir trilogy — The Spaces Between.
The first book, Surfing the Interstates, is about the summer of 1973 when I hitchhiked across America at twenty-one — broke, directionless, running from a family that had just blown apart. I wrote it over three years with the help of an AI named Claude, taught myself to publish, recorded the audiobook in my Vermont living room, and put it out into the world. You can read it here on Substack, or buy it pretty much anywhere books are sold.
Sahara Dust picks up where that story left off. After the hitchhiking odyssey, I spent a lost decade trying to break into Hollywood, chasing my father’s approval, and failing at both — until I met a woman named Thea Ramsey and followed her to the Caribbean. What happened next were the best five years of my life. We built a windsurfing school on a beach in Antigua, hired local boys as surrogate sons, taught tourists, lived in the trade winds. And I was so consumed by the wind and the water and the building of it all that I didn’t see what was happening right in front of me.
The third book, Green Mountain Flash, covers everything that came after — thirteen years of trying to recreate what I’d lost, finally landing in Vermont, meeting Veronica, creating a successful photography business with her, until a series of seizures did what I could never do for myself: forced me to stop moving. It’s the story of what happens when a lifelong wanderer runs out of road.
I’m currently writing Sahara Dust live, one chapter at a time, right here on this page. The table of contents below is the tanks of contents. As each chapter goes live, it’ll become a link. Some titles may change. The order may shift. That’s the beauty of subscribing now — you get to watch the thing take shape.
If you want to start from the beginning, Surfing the Interstates is up above in its own section. But you don’t have to. This story stands on its own. All you need to know is that a fool fell in love, built a paradise, and lost everything.
Table of Contents
Chapters titles below will turn into live links as they are published.
Content will only be available to paid subscribers.
PART ONE: CHASING MY TAIL
1973–1982 · Chasing the wrong dream until the right one finds you
1. Back to Nothing — Returning to a home that’s no longer home
2. The Maddens and the Mountain — California round two, still broke, still dreaming
3. The Rug — Hollywood from the inside, and why it was hollow
4. Refugees — Two broken people find each other
PART TWO: THE VOYAGE OF THE ID
May 1982 · Three weeks that changed everything
5. No Turning Back — Wheels up to Antigua, no plan but a feeling
6. The Id — Boarding a 42-foot ketch with a drunk captain and two windsurfers strapped to the deck
7. Ghost Beach — Plane wreckage on the sand and a beach that seemed to be waiting
8. I Could Have a Baby Here — Island hopping, dolphins off Dominica, and words that changed the air
9. The Discovery — A hotel bar conversation that planted the seed
PART THREE: JOLLY BEACH
1983–1985 · Building paradise on sand
10. The Devil’s Contract — Meeting the Prime Minister, signing a deal as the bulldozers arrive
11. Surrogate Sons — Normandy, Shines, and the school we built together
12. The Protection Game — Island politics and a 40-minute recorded threat
13. Maine Summers — The annual escape that kept her breathing
14. Family Circus — When your family visits paradise, paradise gets complicated
15. Planing — The moment when windsurfing became something else entirely
16. The Montserrat Crossing — Speed record across a dangerous channel to a city that no longer exists
PART FOUR: LORD NELSON
1985–1987 · The high wind kingdom
17. Lord Nelson’s Domain — Bigger waves, stronger wind, and a beach she couldn’t follow me to
18. Celebrity Winds — Bob Dylan at the airport, magazine covers, and the illusion of arrival
19. The Redgraves’ Dinner — Vanessa Redgrave falling off a windsurfer all afternoon, and Thea’s last great evening
20. April Dust — Orange skies for ten days and an old-timer’s warning
21. The Garden Retreat — When she stopped coming to the beach
22. The Ring at Le Bistro — The proposal I was too afraid to make
23. Stone from Sky — A plane crashes fifty yards from the birthday cake
PART FIVE: UNRELATED SURVIVOR
1987 · Sandcastles return to sand
24. Sahara Dust — The sky turns orange and stays that way
25. Dismantling Paradise — Fifty thousand dollars for a life’s work
26. St. Vincent’s — A man built for wind trapped in hospital corridors
27. McFarland’s Cove — Burial at sea off a Maine lighthouse, into the gray Atlantic
28. Erased — Seven years together, no legal standing
The book begins with a man who has nowhere to go and ends with a man who has nowhere to go. The difference is everything that happened in between. That's why this trilogy is titled — The Spaces Between.