I have written and published three novels: Don’t Say Charm (my first book), Lucid Love, and The Adventures of Abel Span (a young-adult novel). I also am currently seeking a publisher for another fiction novel entitled The Automatic Diary of Noah Zi.
To purchase the books on Amazon, please see these links:
Don't Say Charm is a bildungsroman set in the city of Baltimore in the early 2000s. It chronicles the adventures of Caffer, a student at Johns Hopkins University, and his girlfriend Emily, as they navigate a web of parties, friends, and relationships, eventually leading to Caffer's self-imposed exile in Mexico during a period of political tumult, and a tragic ending that pulls him back to his home state of New York. The time capsule-like narrative weaves in various depictions and descriptions of early millennial life in the United States.
Lucid Love is a formally measured, psychologically incisive sophomore novel that explores the tensions between artistic ambition, romantic attachment, and emotional self-preservation. Set in contemporary Baltimore, the narrative follows Muriel, a high school teacher and part-time musician, as he attempts to sustain both a struggling independent rock band and a fragile, emergent relationship with Julia—his bandmate’s ex-girlfriend.
Structured around the events leading up to and following a chaotic live performance, the novel renders the cityscape with atmospheric precision while charting Muriel’s descent into conflicting allegiances: to his art, to his ideals, and to a deepening love that may compromise both. The story is interspersed with meditations on underground music culture, the dynamics of creative collaboration, and the unspoken contracts of intimacy and loyalty. As the band fractures under the weight of aesthetic differences and personal grievances, Muriel is forced to confront the porous boundaries between private longing and public failure.
Drawing on traditions of American realism and contemporary autofiction, Kevin J.B. O’Connor’s Lucid Love combines lyrical detail with thematic rigor, offering a portrait of millennial adulthood shaped by disillusionment, renewal, and the pursuit of meaning amid cultural and relational entropy.
A bridge collapses under mysterious circumstances just outside of Shakesville, California, and Abel Span and Maria Leah—two young, aspiring engineers, and partners in Professor Zoomer’s Great Bridges class at Shakesville High—embark on a journey of danger and discovery to find out what caused it. After tracing the source to a small border town in New Mexico—close to the infamous No Fences bridge, a failed structure that had once been lauded as a beacon of U.S.-Mexican technical collaboration—the two become enmeshed in the investigation of a nefarious secret society that has been causing earthquakes and other catastrophes across the country.
Read a review of The Adventures of Abel Span by The US Review of Books:
Read a review of Lucid Love by The US Review of Books
