Damon Ferrara is a 25-year-old storyteller from Upstate New York, a real place that isn’t the city. Homeschooled as a child, he started college at 12, earning a degree in History and Politics at 18. He now holds a master’s degree in screenwriting and another in marketing. He has passed months or years in England, Italy, Hong Kong, Korea, and, yes, New York City, a town he reluctantly admits is somewhat groovy.
Damon has been writing stories since before he can remember, before he could even speak (a skill which came rather late to him). Literature and cinema alike have always called to him. He loves stories for the same reason he loves traveling and history: He wants to know. Exploration comes with meeting new people, times, and places. From that exploration we learn shards of truth about mankind and ourselves. Stories and travel are the best means to uncover that truth, because they both bring us closer to people who are different from us. If we cannot understand the world without bias, Damon would like to understand it with empathy.
We learn everything from others. We learn to speak from our parents, culture comes from our friends and family, our education from teachers using textbooks written by experts. Computers exist because, once, someone invented fire — and told the story. And in our lives, most people we “meet” are fictional characters. We enter, not just into their houses, but into the deepest truths of their minds. Stories show us strangers in their most intimate colors. Often we first learn to understand someone different from us through fiction, and only then do we learn to understand them in reality. And that makes fiction vital to society.
Damon's life mission is to write stories, like those that inspire him, that inspire others, that remind us all of our common human spirit. He wants his works to be of him, of his fears and flaws and insecurities, but also of his dreams, talents, and everything he's learned in his journey so far. His self-published debut is available on Amazon, a dark and strange odyssey through modern America and the dreams of a broken young man.
His next novel is nearly complete, a romantic murder mystery set in Regency England ("When a duke is murdered, his daughter begins to believe the man of her dreams is also the man who killed her father.") He plans to traditionally publish the novel, and turn it into a series. He is also in the early stages of writing a political satire more tonally similar to his debut. Damon has also written multiple sitcom pilot scripts and screenplays, and hopes to one day write for the silver screen as well as the page.
“Dark humor meets deep introspection in this uniquely conceived, conversational fever dream.”
– Kirkus Reviews
FICTION & LITERATURE
AND ONE DAY MY STARS WILL BURN
BY Damon Ferrara
A novel chronicling the adventures of a native New Yorker ne’er-do-well.
Though protagonist Isaac Flinch was a child prodigy, in his 20s, he finds himself stuck in limbo with fleeting dreams of becoming a filmmaker. In 2018, he wanders Manhattan feeling (and behaving) like a dejected, sexually repressed slacker who’s “done with reality.” Flinch regularly visits a homeless woman named Sarah Callahan, checks Tinder for profile matches, and fantasizes about women like (his “perfect soulmate”) actor Juno Savoy, whom he meekly romances (he compares his romantic prowess to a “washed-up Florida crocodile with only the bite left to crush a garter snake”). After his mother’s passing, Flinch shares an apartment with his critical father, a veteran, who has high, probably doomed, hopes for his son. In a mishmash of reality and imagined visions, some of Isaac’s urbanite adventures are mere dreams flourishing in his imagination, while others, like working in a department store and conversations with his father, Sarah, or co-worker Anna, are fully realized and provide narrative momentum. In his debut, 22-year-old novelist Ferrara sprinkles in, among the light melodrama of Flinch’s life, philosophical moments about class disparities, death, women, sexism, and political correctness. He ably uses Flinch as a vehicle to consider these topics while his struggling main character navigates the slings and arrows of contemporary city life. Whether Flinch is arguing with his boss, sharing a moment with Sarah, deflecting criticisms from his father, or sharing a pizza with Satan in a dream montage, there are plenty of nonsensical non sequiturs to keep readers on their toes. To the author’s credit, Flinch is a curious oddity and a conundrum all at once. Readers will certainly find themselves rooting for him to discover true love and happiness while enjoying the awkward hilarity of his hapless, befuddling circumstances.
Dark humor meets deep introspection in this uniquely conceived, conversational fever dream.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
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