About Vesper

Vesper is a fictional world told through short stories, novellas, and short film. The stories range from intimate drama to romance to thriller to quiet horror. There’s even a young adult fiction novella for younger readers.

The stories explore themes of trauma and healing, love and loss, and finding light in a city that is going dark. Many of the stories are quietly devastating. I try to have them carry a weight far greater than their small size.

Vesper is, so far at least, a one-person project. I live in the old town of Brasov, Romania, with my wife and three children. The street outside our home has cobblestones that are beautiful in the rain and the hours are marked by the bells of the Orthodox church that fills my window. I feel lucky to live somewhere as close to Old Town as you can get these days.

The stories are drawn from my own life and struggles.

I see my 3 year old son spending hours poring through wildlife guides, quietly whispering the names of the animals to himself, and I see the boy collecting beetles in the lots.

I look at our struggles to protect our kids from the constant lure of digital addiction, and I can feel the pull even as it exists now, pre-Bright.

The father hunger that exists in me shows up in many of my characters, and their healing is perhaps a bit of my healing as well.

For me these stories have a particular purpose, to move me from numbness and experiencing life as a grind to feeling more fully alive again, more loving, more tender, more hopeful. To feeling that mix of grief and beauty that is so often present in Vesper.

I hope these stories and this world touch something in you as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read them. I always welcome hearing from you at derek@thelastlamp.com. I’ll reply back as soon as I can.

— Derek
Brașov, Romania