Mateo Askaripour Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Mateo Askaripour
Mateo Askaripour’s favorite pastimes include binging movie trailers and music videos, dancing around his apartment, and drinking Yerba mate.

He was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in Medium, Entrepreneur, Catapult, LitHub, and The Rumpus, as well as other places.

“Black Buck” is Mateo’s debut novel which was released in the year 2021 and is from the literary fiction genre. It quickly became a New York Times Bestseller upon its release.

When Mateo was a kid, he was reading “Frog and Toad” and “Clifford”, but was never planning to be a novelist someday. Writing for him was just something in the background, something that he did, something he enjoyed doing creatively, but he never thought of actually becoming a novelist. He figured that when he got into the tech world, he said he would probably start a company one day, make it very impactful, then write a book down the line on how he did it. “Black Buck” is kind of a play on this idea.

A lot of his book is a direct correlation with his own life. Every feeling that is in the book correlates with something he himself felt at some point. He could not have any of his characters feel things in a visceral way if he himself didn’t feel them: Darren did that, as he pushed his family and closest homies to the side. Mateo did this too. As his eyes started to open, and he started to lose his inner compass, he turned to writing. This is with the aid of books and taking a step back from the world he was so steeped in.

The novel was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Mateo is excited about it. One fact sure to make people believe in a higher power: the Midtown office where the novel is set is not just the office Mateo himself worked in, but also where HMH has its New York offices. After reading the book, the people at HMH thought that Mateo chose the building on purpose, so that they would like the book, but it was just fate at work.

In May of 2016, he gave up his weekend partying and began writing: a blog, articles, and his first novel. That August, he quit his job and completed his manuscript in just four and a half months. His path from there was just figuring out how to be a writer. He didn’t have any training or an MFA, and wondered about what he was doing at times, if he should maybe stay in tech. What he did was write and read more. Mateo wrote two books in one year, just trial and error.

Through the process, he went to Costa Rica, sent queries, googled literary agencies, and made phone calls. Each of the rejection letters he received made him happy. When he was back in New York, he continued to query agents, getting nine responses, but nothing happened.

Then he went to Bali, then Bangkok. He rewrote book two and got even more responses to his queries, but still nothing happened for him. Finally he decided to just throw external ideas out the window and figured he was going to just have fun and pen the novel he wanted to write. It was in January of 2018 that he began writing Black Buck.

When he first started working on it, it felt to him like he was finally free to just write the book that he wanted, exactly how he wanted, and for the people he was looking to serve. Before this, the two novels he worked on didn’t earn him a book deal or an agent, but it was a time that he reached a creative low point that he found enough freedom that allowed to write Black Buck, and once he had that, there wasn’t any turning back for him.

While at the Rhode Island Writers Colony, he found his community. It changed his life, as he felt supported as a writer. He gave a reading and a man came up to Mateo when he was finished and wanted to buy his book. There wasn’t a published book, however the validation he got made him think that he would be able to get to the place he wanted to be.

“Black Buck” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. His goal is to teach you how to sell. And if he is half the salesman that every blog, newspaper, and hustler in New York City says he is, then you really are in luck. With his story, he will provide you with the tools to go out and create the life that you want. Does that sound fair?

Meet Buck. However before he was the Muhammad Ali of sales, floating like a butterfly and selling like a demon, he was just Darren. Just an unambitious twenty-two year old that lived with his mom and worked at Starbucks. All of that changes when one chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of the hottest tech startup in NYC, and it results in Darren joining Rhett’s elite sales team.

Darren, on his first day, realizes that he is the only Black person working at the company, and when things begin getting strange, he reimagines himself as ‘Buck’, unrecognizable to his buddies and family, and is a ruthless salesman. Partying, money, and fame quickly follow Buck, and wherever he goes more never is enough.

Tragedy unfortunately strikes at home, and he starts hatching a plan to help out young people of color to infiltrate America’s sales force, and sets off a series of events that change the game forever.

Readers found this to be a hilarious and gleaming satire that is just as radiant as its author, and this novel is both bomb and balm. Mateo delivers an earnest novel of satire and is a razor-sharp skewering of office culture, and is a crackling and propulsive debut novel which explores race and ambition, and it makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream. He is able to seal the deal right from the first page, in this high wire act that is filled with dark, comic energy and verve.