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I didn’t write No Vacancy for Sanity because I thought the world needed another workplace comedy. I wrote it because I needed to survive mine.
If you’ve ever worked in hospitality—or corporate America, or customer service, or literally anywhere you were expected to smile while unraveling inside—you already know: sanity is not part of the amenities. You either laugh, or you scream. This book is what happened when I chose the former.
At first glance, No Vacancy for Sanity is an absurd workplace novel about a Holiday Inn Express in Texas, where the fire alarm, the espresso machine, and the emotionally combusting staff all take turns imploding. But underneath the chaos is something real: burnout, chosen family, queer survival, and what it means to keep showing up when the world keeps catching fire.
Why I Wrote It
I was the General Manager of multiple hotels for years. I’ve cleaned toilets while in a suit, mediated fights between housekeepers and meth-head guests, been called a f****t by a man who later booked his Grindr hookup in my hotel—and I had to comp the room.
I wrote No Vacancy for Sanity for people like me. For the ones who show up, hold it together, and fall apart later in the supply closet.
This book is my love letter to that world.
“The check-in queue, already snaking past the perpetually overflowing complimentary coffee station, swelled with the aggrieved and the bewildered. Each face was a new demand, a fresh accusation, a silent question: Why is this happening? Austin didn’t have an answer. He barely had a pulse.”
What It’s About (Besides the Breakdown)
Austin is the gay, tightly-wound general manager of a cursed hotel. His front desk team includes a sarcastic manager with ADHD, a flat-affect Hawaiian genius, a doe-eyed teenager who doesn’t get sarcasm, and a spiritual owner who once hotboxed the Zen Den with incense and trauma.
Guests range from cryptid hunters to cheerleading squads to rodeo cowboys with emotional support goats. The lobby becomes a battlefield. The Wi-Fi dies. The AC melts. And somehow, everyone expects free breakfast anyway.
“A woman, her face a furious crimson, stood at the front desk, not screaming about the alarm, but about a rogue squirrel. ‘It’s taunting me! It looked at me, Mr. Austin, with… malice!’”
And yet, through all of it, Austin keeps showing up. Because behind every meltdown is a moment of humanity. Because the team becomes a family, one sarcastic insult and near-nervous-breakdown at a time.
“The goat, thankfully, was gone, but the lingering smell and the faint outline of hoof prints on the carpet suggested its brief, destructive residency.”
What’s Hiding Under the Comedy
This isn’t just a comedy. It’s about failure—and what comes after. Austin is a man rebuilding from a professional implosion. He’s terrified, triggered, and trying desperately not to let anyone see him crack. He finds grace not in grand redemption arcs, but in small moments: his husband’s hand on his shoulder, his team covering for him when he spirals, the way Charlotte quietly counts the complimentary toothbrushes to stay grounded.
“I can’t fail again, Gabe,” Austin says. The words were stuck in his throat, a bitter, metallic taste: I’m failing, Gabe. I’m failing again.
I didn’t write this to make fun of hotel workers. I wrote it for them. And for anyone who’s ever had to keep smiling while the room burned down around them.
Read It If You’ve Ever:
- Taken your job way too seriously because it’s the only thing you can control
- Been told to calm down while everything was very much not fine
- Made a dysfunctional team your found family
- Laughed through the trauma because the alternative was collapse
- Needed someone to say, you’re not the only one barely holding it together
“Austin managed a tight smile. ‘Excellent, Charlotte. A true bastion of order. For now, however, we have a missing suitcase. Lime green. Unicorn. Skateboard.’”
Read It Now
If you’ve ever asked, “Is it just me, or is this whole place unhinged?”—this book is for you.
It’s The Office meets Nervous Breakdown, with a side of patchouli and burnt waffles.
📘 No Vacancy for Sanity is available now—and free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
📚 Or check out the rest of my books at amazon.com/author/theclobra