Denver, CO
Hopefully this can help answer some of your most popular questions about my new novel, PARANOID ANDROID. If you have a question that hasn't been covered, please leave it in the comments below.
Q. What is PARANOID ANDROID about?
A. Twenty-five years after graduating from an elite Manhattan prep school, members of a once-tight-knit friend group begin dying under suspicious circumstances. When Las Vegas poker pro Jasper Zen starts investigating, he uncovers long-buried secrets connecting his former classmates to a sprawling international conspiracy. The deeper he digs into the past, the line between coincidence and murder becomes harder to ignore and he realizes he may not be prepared for what he finds.
Q. What is PARANOID ANDROID really about?
A. There's a deeper exploration of friendships, especially your high school friends you made as a teenager, and why some bonds last forever and how some friends eventually become strangers. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about them, and how those stories fall apart over time.
Like all my novels, PARANOID ANDROID delves into late-stage capitalism and the ways economic systems affect people differently depending on where they sit in the hierarchy. This novel explores class, educational elitism, ambition, power, secrets, and corporate greed.
The deaths of multiple classmates reveal a conspiracy woven into the architecture of global power and surveillance, and how technology is manipulated to give powerful institutions unprecedented visibility into our lives. It touches on the arrival of fascism and surveillance capitalism, and the emergence of a technocratic class that increasingly shapes society without democratic accountability.
Q. Your main character is a poker pro. Is this a poker novel or another gambling book?
A. Let me be clear... this is not a poker or gambling novel. Yes, the main character is a professional gambler who got his start in online poker before moving to Las Vegas. He eventually pivoted to sports betting and used his gambling earnings to start multiple businesses including a tech startup.
Q. Your main character is a poker pro. Is this a poker novel or another gambling book?
A. Let me be clear... this is not a poker or gambling novel. Yes, the main character is a professional gambler who got his start in online poker before moving to Las Vegas. He eventually pivoted to sports betting and used his gambling earnings to start multiple businesses including a tech startup.
Q. Does your novel take place in Las Vegas?
A. Several chapters take place in Vegas and Macau is featured in another chapter. PARANOID ANDROID has other chapters set in Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York City, Amsterdam, and Costa Rica.
Q. Why is PARANOID ANDROID relevant today?
A: Although I'm much older than the characters in this novel, I wanted to write about a generation caught between two worlds. The characters are millennials and came of age before smartphones, social media, and AI. They now live in a society increasingly shaped by algorithms, widespread surveillance, and data collection.
Politically, the book asks who holds power in a technological age. Nostalgically, it asks what happens when we revisit the people and memories we thought we understood. Those questions felt relevant when I started writing the novel 12 months ago, and feel even more relevant today considering global events and domestic malaise.
Q. What are your inspirations behind PARANOID ANDROID?
A. Thomas Pynchon was the starting point. I read Vineland and Bleeding Edge back-to-back and became fascinated by the way Pynchon combines paranoia, technology, politics, and humor into stories that feel both absurd and unsettling. Those novels convinced me that conspiracy fiction could be about much more than secret plots, but a way of exploring how power operates in modern society.
After finishing the first draft, I read Adam Ross's Playworld, which was one of the best novels I'd read in years. It was the kind of book that kicks a writer's ass while simultaneously inspiring them. Reading it pushed me to raise my standards and approach the second draft with much deeper ambition.
Slow Horses, both the source novels by Mick Herron and the streaming series about British spies who are washed up or total fuck-ups, was also a catalyst.
On the cinematic side, Michael Clayton was probably the single biggest influence. I love stories where ordinary people slowly realize they're confronting systems much larger than themselves. More broadly, I drew inspiration from 1970s paranoid thrillers and neo-noirs that reflected the political and social upheaval happening at the time in the wake of the Kennedy and MLK assassinations, Vietnam War, Watergate, and the OPEC crisis. The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, Chinatown, Night Moves, Klute, Serpico, Marathon Man, and The Long Goodbye were films that created a mood of distrust and uncertainty. I wanted to capture that on the page, but reflecting upon our own economic, political, social, and tech tumult.
I was also influenced by journalism films such as All the President's Men, Spotlight, Shattered Glass, and Zodiac. At its heart, PARANOID ANDROID is an investigation. After one of his journalist friends die, Jasper Zen is constantly trying to separate truth from misinformation. Those films provided a blueprint for how a determined person uncovers hidden connections that powerful institutions would prefer remain invisible.
Q. What are the best comps for this novel?
A. The DNA probably comes from Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo on the literary side, and conspiracy thrillers on the commercial side. I wanted to write a novel that explored surveillance, technology, and power, but with the momentum of a murder mystery.
Q. Why the title PARANOID ANDROID?
A: The title comes from the Radiohead song, and one of the characters is a huge Radiohead fan. The Radiohead song references the fictional character, Marvin the Paranoid Android, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
The title also reflects the novel's two major obsessions: paranoia and technology.
The characters live in a world dominated by surveillance systems, corporate power, and the collection of personal data. The novel explores what happens when people begin to realize how much of their lives are being monitored, analyzed, and monetized. Are they paranoid? Or are they finally seeing the machinery that's been operating around them all along?
The android is a metaphor for a society becoming increasingly mediated by technology and the rise of AI. Algorithms shape behavior, screens shape perception, and human beings are often treated as data points within larger systems. That's the tension at the heart of the book.
Q. How is PARANOID ANDROID linked with your other novels in its own literary universe?
A. I crafted the concept that my novels occupy the same literary universe. The books are all standalone stories, so readers don't need to read any of the others first, but longtime readers will notice connections, recurring references, and the occasional familiar face. Everyone loves Easter eggs right? It's a way to reward loyalty explicitly with an added layer of enjoyment for devout supporters who read any of my other books.
PARANOID ANDROID contains Easter eggs from several of my previous novels. A character from GUARD THIS makes a brief cameo, a character from FADED is mentioned, and readers of THE KICKER will recognize the GIL, my fictional version of the NFL, which exists in both books.
There are also smaller references scattered throughout the novel for attentive readers to discover. None of these references are necessary to understand the story, but they're a little reward for readers who've been following my work over the years.
I like the idea that all of these stories are happening in different corners of the same universe. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes they're subtle, but they create the sense that the characters and events from one novel continue to exist long after that particular story ends.
Q. Is there a playlist or soundtrack?
A. Of course! Music is always a huge part of my creative process. I curate playlists to be listened as a companion piece to the novel.
Visit Spotify (
username is @taopauly) to listen to an
official soundtrack, several character playlists, a
party mixtape, and a
writing playlist that I listened to while drafting and editing the book.
The title of this novel comes from a Radiohead song. Radiohead is the favorite band of one of the characters,
Stevie Tan, so Stevie's mix is heavy on Radiohead.
Music is always an essential part of my writing process, but these playlists and character mixes were woven into the DNA of PARANOID ANDROID in a way that few soundtracks have been since FRIED PEACHES. The songs shaped the mood, vibes, atmosphere, and emotional landscape of the novel.
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If you have
any other questions about the new novel, please ask them in the comments or contact me.
I'll be happy to update this section to include your questions and my
answers.
If you enjoy this Q&A format, then check out previous novels including THE KICKER FAQs, FADED FAQs and FRIED PEACHES FAQs.
PARANOID ANDROID is available in paperback and an ebook.
