I wrote Playing Coltrane because stories about us—about Black men navigating power, survival, and identity—are too often written by others. Before my tenth birthday, I watched leaders like Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Dr. King be assassinated. I felt the weight of history before I fully understood it. This novel is my response—my raised fist.

It’s a hard-boiled crime story, but more than that, it’s a reclamation. A modern noir with political intrigue, corruption, and murder, but told through the lens of an unapologetic Black man who refuses to be erased. Inspired by the tradition of Mosley’s Easy Rawlins, Playing Coltrane challenges the genre, calling things by name, no matter how uncomfortable.

I wrote this book because I had to. Because our stories deserve to be told—by us, for us