I love words.
In my early career, I worked as an editor and writer of children’s books and young adult novels. I had a habit of inserting my best friends as fictional characters. Then I got to be a character myself, in Falling For Ryan (scroll down for cover). But before long, I started writing adult nonfiction books about bizarre and fascinating American subcultures, like the ones below:
MARIJUANAMERICA is my attempt to understand America’s long-standing love-hate relationship with our favorite (sometimes) illegal drug. My cross-country investigation starts sensibly enough: enrolling at cannabis college, visiting the world’s largest dispensary, and hanging out with a man who gets 300 pre-rolled joints per month from the U.S. government. But after connecting with a mysterious friend of a friend, I find myself embedded with one of the West Coast’s biggest black market growers. And that’s when things go a bit haywire.
“This book is so entertaining, I want to roll it up and smoke it.”
“Marijuanamerica has it all: danger, suspense, nuts-and-bolts reportage, laugh-out-loud dialogue, gritty characters, sociological dissection, and hella deep thoughts.”
“It reads like something Hunter S. Thompson might have written in his Hell’s Angels days, had he laid off the hard stuff and graduated from Yale.”
EAT THIS BOOK is my way-too-deep dive into the strange and funny world of competitive eating. While working as an emcee for Major League Eating, I take the reader out on the circuit with the gurgitators, revealing training techniques and taking you backstage with the likes of Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. Then I make the mistake of training and competing myself. Almost as delicious as the book itself is my appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (see below).
“Using my own patented dunking technique, I ate this book in two minutes and thirteen seconds. It should have been faster, but the cover did not masticate easily.”
“A year on the competitive eating circuit was an exhausting experience for Nerz, but he has produced a fascinating account, full of insight and humor.”
Teen Steam Romance Maker Deluxe | Yeah that’s me on the cover. Not at all weird or creepy. Important to note that my character is described as: “obnoxious Ryan Baron, the smart aleck who lives to torture her.” (Shout out to Raina Wallens for changing the title and main characters’ name to Ryan.)