Independent
Publisher
Break the Road Publishing strives to expand the landscape of literary voices, beginning with the publication of Jerome Stern’s short story collection, Little Did He Know, available now.
Independent
No Internet. No Cellphones. No Chance.
Little Did He Know
Stories from another lifetime
An eventful train ride. A fatefully timed snowstorm. Late night confessions, half-baked schemes, and bumbling sexual interludes leading nowhere. An endless string of office temp jobs, basement apartments, and crushing heartache. Relive the era at the precipice of a new millennium, when life was supposedly less complicated yet just as crazy.
Written between 1985 and 1995, when the author was in his twenties, these stories were once a young man’s singleminded obsession—until, abruptly, they weren’t. This one-of-a-kind collection offers a unique glimpse into the mind of an aspiring writer as he let everything else in his life slide.
Jerome Stern
Jerome Stern grew up in the Boston suburbs. He wrote his first short story as a teenager and his last one when he was nearing thirty, in 1995. That’s when he quit writing fiction once and for all to lead a “normal” life instead.
Over a ten-year stretch, Jerome wrote a slacker novel set in Los Angeles, numerous screenplays featuring indecisive main characters, and dozens of short stories, including the title novella of this collection, “Little Did He Know.” His personal account of the alienation, missteps, and romantic dead-ends of young adulthood today reads as the bittersweet traces of an increasingly unrecognizable world.
A husband and father, Jerome lives in the Boston area, where he works as a video producer and nonlinear video editor. At some point he may take up writing fiction again, though he’s careful not to get his hopes up.
