Slim and The Beast: A Novel

Two best friends, a country bar, a famous burger and a bloodstained floor 

Sergeant Chandler Dykes is obsessed with two misfits: Slim, a former cadet and disillusioned Iraq veteran with a brutal neck scar, and his best friend, The Beast, a college basketball star with a proclivity for cooking. 

As Slim and The Beast sidle up to a bar to take shelter from a hurricane, they strike up a conversation with the bartender, and learn that Sgt. Dykes has been haunting the place, raving about opossums, bathtub whiskey, and his estranged cadet, Slim. As the three men swap tales in hopes of understanding Dykes’ obsession, they are forced to confront their own troubled pasts.

The conversations at Lockart's traverse art, love, sex, and philosophy, while warily observing the increasingly savage storm and the ghosts it seems to be dredging up. Slim and The Beast lays out what’s at stake in a friendship, and the decisions we make on the edge of adulthood that define the person we become.

About the Author

I have lived in Paris, France since 2010, with brief stints in London (master's) and Portugal (dissertation/learn how to surf). I live in a 15m2 apartment, play jazz/blues,and a lot of basketball in a neighborhood called "the swamp."  The Coen brothers, Larry David and David Foster-Wallace are my literary idols. My favorite story ever written remains Harry Potter.

On the more academic side, I'm particularly interested in theories about what defines human nature. I wrote a seriously morbid MA dissertation (UCL) that was essentially research for a third novel: "The Humanness of Cruelty: Alfred Adler, Viktor Frankl and the Psychology of Genocide."

Academia is great, but novels are better. Human beings are born story-tellers-- a great story and philosophical discourse are one in the same. in my opinion. Though I greatly respect academia and admire a lot of the theory, it can be stuffy, elitist and downright pompous. The point of education is to share knowledge, not pigeon-hole it, which has been the goal of Slim  and The Beast all along. You can find further writing (including academic essays) at https://medium.com/@slbfiction.

Publishing Credits 

•  "Essay: The Two Selves." In Paris Lit Up Literary Magazine, Vol. 2, Fall, 2014.

• Correspondent, SLAM Magazine, 2014 Quai 54 World Streetball Championship: http://www.slamonline.com/author/samuellbarrantes/?rel=author

• “Search for Meaning in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.” In The International Forum for Logotherapy, 36: 82-86, 2013.

• Co-writer for scene "The Brother's" in The Narrowing. By Ellen Hemphill and Nor Hall. Directed by Ellen Hemphill. Archipelago Theater, Durham, NC, Fall 2013.

• “She Loves You and You Know This.” In A Phone About to Ring, University College London Union, 16-20, Fall 2012.

•  “The Road to Annihilation -- An Overview of the Wannsee Conference.” In The UVM History Review, edited by Sean Field, 18: 36-42, 2008.

• Editorial assistant on award-winning NY Times journalist Elaine Sciolino’s La Seduction: How The French Play the Game of Life.