I am a business and travel writer, an essayist and a novelist. I’ve published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. (Venues include Vox, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, The American Scholar, WIRED, Writer’s Digest, Popular Mechanics, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and many others.) I’m the author of three novels, a book of short stories, a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice and a memoir of my teenage criminality. I’d like you to pour me a Manhattan right at five.