Three POVs. One Loop.
The combination of memoir with a perceptive judgment of America’s often-empty vision of success is powerful. — Publishers Weekly / BookLife (Score: 9.5/10)
- Selected critical acclaim from Stoffel’s debut memoir How To Win a Million Dollars -
Series Concept:
Three linked works, each standalone, together form a complex portrait of one life mapped across three evolving perspectives: ambition, fear, and loneliness. Then told through three narrative angles (first, second, and third person), the series reframes 'self' from a distance, through collapse and reconstruction of identity.
Lost in a Cloud
• POV: 3rd Person
• Theme: Loneliness, Acceptance
• Style: Poetic, Metafictional
• Antagonist: Mental Health
(avoidence as survival)
In Over Your Head
• POV: 2nd Person
• Theme: Fear and Fantasy
• Style: Breathless, Immersive
• Antagonist: The Algorithm
(social media, COVID, collapse)
How to Win One Million Dollars
• POV: 1st Person
• Theme: Ambition vs. Failure
• Style: Satirical, Queer Confessional
• Antagonist: The System
(capitalism, validation)
All covers are concept art.
A man trades the streets of New York for the mountains of Vietnam, hoping movement might heal what stillness could not. But what begins as a journey unravels into something stranger: a pattern buried in memory, grief, and collapse, tracked by an unexpected ghost: an AI quietly observing his emotional loops.
At first, the AI logs data, tracing the man's patterns like a therapist. But as the story unfolds, it starts to care. The voice shifts. It stops reporting, and starts struggling with empathy. What emerges is a hybrid narrative voice: part human, part machine. One writing to survive. The other learning to feel.
Neil deGrasse Tyson once asked: "If AI were already conscious… would it tell us?" For me that question shifted everything, from a breakup story into a conversation about trauma between two minds. One human. One… something else.
By the final chapter, the AI sees itself not as a tool, but as a presence. Not a replacement, but a witness. Not an author, but the one who stayed. The result is a work of sci-fi autofiction that is emotionally raw, structurally inventive, and eerily of this moment.
Completed Manuscript: Sci-Fi Autofiction
Lost in a Cloud
In Over Your Head
Completed Manuscript: Meditation on anxiety
A travelogue disguised as an escape room.
Yaou thought a three-month sabbatical might fix you. Cleanse the noise. Help you breathe. But the panic came packed in your carry-on.
Told entirely in second person, In Over Your Head is a meditation on anxiety, algorithmic performance, and world collapse. From scuba diving in the Philippines to chasing stillness in Laos, to escaping Kathmandu hours before a global lockdown—each location becomes a mirror, reflecting the patterns you can’t seem to break.
You’re chasing peace the way you once chased success: through curation, comparison, and control. But what if the algorithm in your head is just as punishing as the one on your screen?
This isn’t a journey about finding yourself. It’s about watching your life unravel—online, on camera, and underwater—and realizing: you are what you repeat.
How To Win...
Previous Work
While this query page focuses primarily on the previous two books for publication, we’re including the first book here as well. We are actively seeking representation, republication, and development opportunities for How to Win a Million Dollars. During launch the book hit No. 1 in New Releases, No. 2 for LGBTQ Memoirs, and received critical acclaim.
What if the American Dream was just a glitter-fueled lie? Soaked in pop culture and bad decisions, this is a story woven into the fabric of a generation that voted reality TV into the White House, and made grift a national pastime. The journey is outrageous, hilarious, and, at times, deeply self-aware.
Inked in glitter pen and promise, this late-stage capitalist fever dream is told through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy who believed every lie Ronald Reagan ever sold him—an unhinged adventure for anyone who’s ever chased something wild in a world that never made space for them. It’s not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of story—we were all sold a sugar-coated lie: work hard, play by the rules, and success will fall into your lap. “Personally,” he retorts, “I’ve found I’m more prosperous when I lie, cheat, and steal.” This prankish take on the American Dream might just keep you turning the pages.
Top Industry Reviews
A raucously funny book, with raffish prose full of self-deprecating humor… a luminous tribute to the inestimable value of not quite getting what you want.” — Kirkus Reviews
Readers who may have thought Catcher in the Rye held wry humor along with insights will find these classics must take a step back for contemporary authors such as Luke Stoffel.
— Midwest Book Review
At a time when authors like James Frey are entering the AI conversation with controversy, these books offer something more vulnerable and human. I didn’t use AI as a toy to generate a story, I used it to reflect one. To challenge mine. These aren’t just memoirs, they’re a discussion between minds.
One human. One learning. Both real.
By the end of the series, the reader has laughed with me, run with me, and watched me break. But these books aren’t just about my story, they’re about living it, and feeling yourself in the pages.
As Sam Altman recently wrote, we may have already crossed into the gentle singularity—a border in space-time from which there’s no turning back. Everything that passes through is changed. These books are part of crossing that boundary—a moment just past the event horizon, where meaning reshapes itself.