Three Years, One Question: SKIN OF THE NEGEV
"What happens when you steal something sacred?"
That question became an obsession. Not academically - viscerally. What does cultural appropriation feel like in the body? What are the marks it leaves? What if the spiritual violence became literal, physical, permanent?
The answer became SKIN OF THE NEGEV.
It's a novel about an Israeli man who appropriates a Navajo ritual and becomes a corrupted shapeshifter - able to transform, but marked permanently by what he stole. It's about his brother, who survives the poisoning but can never forgive. It's about the Navajo tracker who comes not to save him, but to formally sever him from the tradition he violated.
It's horror as political critique. Transformation as trap. Body as evidence of theft.
I've spent three years with Ben Asher - watching him dissolve from data scientist to something neither human nor animal, losing his language, his memories, his brother, his humanity. I've sat with Kaye as he performs a ceremony of severance. I've read David's letter - written but never sent - and wept.
This book examines surveillance states, queer persecution, desperate choices, and what remains when you become the thing that doesn't belong anywhere.
Coming 2026.
It's been developed with cultural sensitivity readers to ensure respectful handling of Navajo spiritual elements. It's brutal and literary and asks questions I couldn't stop thinking about.
I can't wait to share it with you.
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