New release · Kindle Short
My Dad Is a New Coke Commercial
A late ’80s coming-of-age comedy, available as a Kindle Short.
View on Amazon ↗Nick Stapay · Author
Stories that take
the strange seriously.
Satire, absurdist humor, and fiction that follows an unusual idea to its logical conclusion, even when that conclusion is thoroughly illogical.
The bookshelf
Books & Kindle Shorts.
Singular worlds.
Each title stands on its own. Start wherever your curiosity leads.
01 · Absurdist crime comedy
Steel McHard: Vol. 1
NYPD detective Steel McHard approaches police work with absolute confidence and almost no restraint. Across five absurd cases, routine investigations escalate into action-movie catastrophes.
View on Amazon ↗
02 · Satirical fiction
Thunder Blitzfist
Los Angeles, 1992. Billionaire ex-cop Thunder Blitzfist has a trailer that is secretly a mansion, extravagant tastes, and a gift for turning every problem into a spectacle.
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03 · Humor & food
Action Movie Lover’s Cookbook
A comic cookbook where food meets destiny, explosions, and emotional recovery through butter. It is made for anyone who prefers every meal served larger than life.
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04 · Social satire
The Hargrave Initiative
CIA agent Victor Hargrave leads a covert unit against society’s strangest irritations, including public FaceTiming and inspirational wall art. The result is a satire of modern behavior.
View on Amazon ↗Coming soon
The shelf is expanding.
Two new books are currently making their way toward the public, despite having been warned about the public.
December 14, 2026
Steel McHard: Vol. 2
Steel returns with the same confidence, the same restraint-free approach to police work, and several new opportunities to make the city’s insurance adjusters reconsider their careers.
Summer 2027
A History of Bad Men
A dark journey through a fractured America in 2042, where a desperate road trip collides with a cult, a corporate secret, and the persistent human talent for making bad situations worse.
About the author
Nick Stapay writes about people, systems, and ideas pushed just beyond the point of reason.
Nick grew up south of Chicago and spent seventeen years managing restaurants, an occupation that provided an extensive education in human behavior, improvised crisis management, and the consequences of someone saying, “How bad could it be?”
His books blend satire, absurdist humor, and genre fiction. He is particularly interested in characters who confront ridiculous systems with complete sincerity. They usually make everything considerably worse while remaining confident they are the only competent person in the room.
His published work includes Steel McHard, Thunder Blitzfist, Action Movie Lover’s Cookbook, The Hargrave Initiative, and the Kindle Short My Dad Is a New Coke Commercial. Future books will wander into darker and stranger territory, because apparently five distinct warnings from the marketplace were not sufficient.
Nick lives and writes in Las Vegas, where the climate strongly encourages indoor creative pursuits. This website exists because placing books on Amazon and waiting politely did not, in fact, cause a marketing department to materialize.
From the blog
Notes, updates & other evidence.
Nothing has been posted yet. For once, the silence is intentional.