Love & Theft

Name: Love & Theft
Brand: Synthetic Prophetic
Price: 27.00 USD
Availability: InStock

by

Benjamin Obler

$27.00 USD

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There are those who play at theft, like actress Sylvie Virgule. Those who accuse others of theft, like Nolan Pilcrow. Those who protect corporations from theft, like Paul Boustrophedon. Filmmaker D. A. Chimister views theft as entertainment, and in Fort Green, Brooklyn, under his direction on the set of Love & Theft, the lives of Virgule, Pilcrow and “Bou” begin to intertwine. The new streaming series is the much-anticipated follow-up from the hit indie auteur, the mentor who launched Sylvie’s career.

In the Catskills, underemployed Hank Delaney steals to survive—not entertaining at all. And his one-time criminal partner, musician Ray Ramirez, gave up theft. But when the vintage muscle car belonging to Delaney’s high school nemesis, John Segal, becomes vulnerable, all bets are off. Delaney convinces Ramirez to con the sister. Shelby Segal is minding the car while her brother recovers from injury, and her ambition to sing professionally sends Ray to his storage locker, retrieving his dusty keyboard and sheet music in preparation for the role of music manager Ray Toledo. Intimacy gained, he’ll seek access to Segal’s shop keys.

Meanwhile In Nova Scotia, five-year-old prodigy Walter Chamaran gains the attention of Buddhist monks, who seek to bring the boy to their monastery for observation. Walter is the glue that binds the lives of the NYC actors, the upstate thieves, and the car owners. His heroic act unites and reconciles the disparate American cliques with the sublimity of two maxipad-shaped strips of rubberized felt joining to form a tennis ball. A little unity, just what this country needs.

About the Author

https://benjaminobler.com/

Benjamin Obler was an English major and intern at Coffee House Press in Minneapolis when an internet company bought the rights to the name of a feminist independent bookstore near Loring Park, in downtown of the city that, yeah, produced Prince, because it's that cool a place. Amazon Books was bought by Amazon.com, the store shortly after was shut down, and the only industry Obler aspired to work in experienced a seismic shift from which it has never recovered. Nevertheless, a career in publishing began.

Obler holds a Master of Letters issued jointly by the University of Glasgow and the University of Strathclyde. He studied visual art for a year at the Glasgow School of Art, receiving credit towards his BA in Creative Writing, (nice one!) and his creative thesis was examined by the great Scottish writer Alasdair Gray.

Through good graces detailed here, he published the novel Javascotia (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin UK, 2009), about a young American living in Glasgow, blindly serving the interests of corporate globalization, and painfully realizing the nature of his Yankee identity.

As an editor for educational publishers, Obler learned much about instruction and assessment in reading, and many other facets of English Language Arts and Writing instruction. He has taught fiction workshop courses at The Loft Literary Center, 92nd Street YMCA, and Gotham Writers Workshop.

In 2015, his short story “The White Man’s Incredulity Furrows His Brow” won first prize in a fiction contest with the journal Puerto Del Sol. Obler has participated in story slams, hosted a literary event for the O+ Positive Festival, and established himself as a literary antagonist, troubled misanthrope, and querulous oddball, in his Hudson Valley, New York, community. In 2024, he founded the small independent publisher Synthetic Prophetic. His short works, fiction and nonfiction, have been published in Cottonwood, Belle Ombre, The Evansville Review, Qwerty, Longreads, the London Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, Thirty-Two Magazine, Sundress, and The Slate.