Pierre & The Ambiguities: An Author's Preface

October 4, 2026

What is Pierre & The Ambiguities to me, a man whose opinion counts for so little? I can only really think of it in relation to my first novel, Only In Dreams, and in that respect, I can say that it is an attempt to do something similar, but different. The main character is slightly older, and the problems he confronts have different faces. The book is written in the third person, allowing a more detached view of his situation. I haven’t counted, but I believe there is more dialogue. But at the end of the day, Pierre & The Ambiguities is another story about a young man trying to find his place in the world — trying, rather, to determine whether he even has a place in the world at all. And I have a feeling that I am going to continue writing such stories, only that the person in question might stop being quite so young as I go on.

I actually finished Pierre & The Ambiguities more than a year ago. There wasn’t an exact moment where I thought, ‘Aha! I’m finished!’ and I’ll admit that even now I have the feeling that I’m releasing something decidedly half-baked into the world. I always felt that there was some larger story to be found surrounding the story contained within this novel, but I was never able to lay my hands on it. The end result might be better for it — who am I to say? When I first sent it to a friend, I told him that it lacked an ending, and he wrote back the next day telling me that I was wrong. Very little has changed since that ‘unfinished’ draft.

I suppose this is the nature of writing novels. You start with an infinite world of possibility and narrow it down to a concrete list of objects and events. That infinite world doesn’t disappear as you go; it remains there, taunting you, tempting you to add one more thing, one more thing. Even when the book is ‘complete,’ that infinity remains — but only in the mind of the author. To the reader, the novel must be a world in and of itself. I suppose the great question of literary quality comes down to whether the author succeeds in crafting one little, finite world out of that large, infinite world.

Regarding Pierre & The Ambiguities, I eventually came to realize that there was little else I could do to it except let it out into the world. I am happy with what it is, even if it could have been something else. It’s been long enough that I can no longer tell what that something else is; I can only see the real existence that is the novel I’m releasing today.

I would like to thank all the people who read the book during the writing process, for each of them helped shape the form it now takes.

I will end this preface with some painfully honest words: I hope this novel means something to you.