Malcolm Ivey / Author

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 3

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 3. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the page anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews and are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 3

She sank into her seat and stared over the steering wheel as Nick sauntered down a narrow walkway between two buildings. His gait was confidence personified; loose‑hipped, head high, shoulders alternating at 45-degree angles as he strode past the squat green air-conditioning units and bubble-faced electricity meters that were stag­gered along the beige vinyl-sided walls of the alley. She wished he would forego the coolness and step it up.

She watched him swagger past a rusty barbecue grill, sidestep a ten-speed and duck beneath a distant stairwell before disappearing altogether into the byzantine apart­ment complex. She exhaled and glanced up at the rearview. Her own eyes were there waiting . . . judging.

“What?” Her voice split the silence.

An elderly man labored past the front of her car, hand in hand with a ponytailed girl in a purple tutu, four years old at most. With breathless enthusiasm and energy to burn, the child hopped down the sidewalk, tugging her grandfather along, babbling happily about the spectacu­lar world she was discovering, a world of magic and music and colors and bugs and birds. He noticed Miranda and nodded hello.

She managed a tight smile despite her anxiety. It wasn’t so long ago when she was a little ponytailed girl in a tutu herself. Now she was almost 19 with an opioid habit and a loaded pistol in her purse.

And an ounce of heroin, her inner narrator pointed out. Let’s not forget that.

She glanced down at it. Talc-like powder glazed the inside of the bag. What color was that? Not quite white but lighter than beige. Biscuit, oatmeal, eggshell? Taupe. It came to her. Rhymes with dope.

The plastic brushed her hand seductively as she reached for her phone. She answered her father’s text first. “Sorry. Can’t go.” She typed with her thumbs. “Midterms.” His response was instantaneous. “Can I bor­row 100 bucks?” She rolled her eyes but didn’t respond. Next, she checked her Twitter feed. Some troll was making lude remarks about her Michelle Obama retweet from the 2016 DNC. “When they go low, we go high.” Probably a bot. Possibly a Russian. She lamented for a moment how a country that gave the world Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky could be synonymous with human rights abuse and election meddling . . . then she blocked his ass. Next up, Facebook, or, as her dad called it, Myface. The last post on her timeline was a Molly Ivins quote. “Freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right.” Right on, she thought. Even though she didn’t remember putting it up. The days and nights had been running together since Nick started crashing in her apartment. Eighteen likes, eight loves, no shares, and a single comment. Lauren Talbot gushed her customary, “Love you bunches!” Again.

She glanced at the time. It was almost 4 o’clock. The little girl and her grandfather were all the way to the end of the sidewalk where the bluffs descended into the bay. Straight ahead, the alley yawned, unspooling into shad­ows. She squinted through the windshield, willing a swaggering shape to materialize.

She slid the phone back inside her purse, careful to avoid the black handle of the pistol that protruded from the open zipper like a rubber phallus. She wondered if it had ever killed anyone. Guns don’t kill people, her inner narrator piped up, people kill people. A half-moon auburn eyebrow rose in the rearview. A famous NRA slogan? Where on earth did that come from? But she already knew the answer. The voice in her head was not bound by loyalty to any specific set of principles. It hopscotched shamelessly across the ideological aisle, sometimes con­tradicting itself in sequential sentences. If it was loyal to anything, it was the sound of its own incessant chatter.

Fine, she clarified. I wonder if Nick has ever killed anyone.

The heavy question sank in her mind like a brick in the bay, falling through the murky depths before thudding to the floor in a soundless poof. Even her inner narrator went quiet. But the silence was soon filled with the relentless palpitations of her pounding heart.

Serenity whispered from the glassine baggie in her purse, beckoning like a forbidden lover. A quick sniff would slow the speedbag that was hammering against the cell bars of her ribcage, muffle the running soliloquy in her head and massage the anxiety from her nerve endings with warm opiated balm.

Almost in a trance, she pulled her keys from the ignition and reached for the dope. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Poppy derivatives were poppy derivatives—Roxys, Percs, Tabs, Dilaudid, Boi . . . Same family. A tiny bump meant nothing in the great scheme of things. She just needed a little tide-me-over. Something to take the edge off. Something to turn the sound down.

She looked long down the worn and narrow trail that snaked between the apartment buildings for a final time before pulling apart the Ziploc.

The pungent smell of vinegar wafted up from the bag and filled the car as she submerged the key and scooped a miniscule amount onto the tip, jiggling off the excess granules, fully aware that any one of which could be a lethal crystal of Fentanyl despite Gucci’s boasts of purity.

Fentanyl is the least of your worries, her inner narrator snipped. It’s Carfentanyl you should be concerned about. The equivalent of a single salt grain is enough to tranquilize an elephant. That’s what guys like Gucci are using to stretch their beloved product. And do you think he’ll lose a minute of sleep when you overdose? Do you think anyone will? Please. You’ll just be another dead face in the obituaries. I cannot believe how reckless you’ve become. What’s next? Meth? Crack?

The answer was something far more sinister. There was no next. Heroin was the final stop.

With a trembling hand she carefully raised the dope-powdered key, eyeballing it all the way. The distance between the bag and her itchy nose felt like Everest. Home stretch. She used the rearview to guide key to nostril. Blue eyes stared back at her from the mirror, consciousness aware of itself. Then, like a foreboding black storm cloud moving over the sun, a police cruiser crept slowly across her back window.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 2

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 2. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the page anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews and are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Missed Chapter 1? Read it here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 2

For a car manufactured at the turn of the century and on the wrong side of 200,000 miles, the Avalon was in pris­tine condition. “Can’t beat these Japanese cars and their timing chains,” said her dad when he handed over the keys for her sixteenth birthday. “Damn things run forever.” And he was right. He usually was when it came to cars. Almost three years later the old Toyota was still gliding along.

She hit unlock on the key fob and settled behind the wheel, pouting as Nick swaggered around to the passen­ger side. “What’s up, bae?” He folded his long body into the leather bucket seat and slammed the door. “You feeling some type of way?”

For all of her gushing about his street slang, a few of the more nonsensical phrases grated on her; feeling some type of way, for example. Typical vague noncommittal male statement. What type of way?

She started the car and backed slowly down the steep driveway. “If by some type of way you mean livid, then, yes. I am. I’m feeling some type of way about your com­plete lack of chivalry.”

Impossibly long lashes blinked in her periphery. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you not objecting when Captain Hook in there insulted me.”

“Gucci?” He frowned. “How did he insult you?”

“Um, he called me your bitch for starters.”

Perplexity. “Wait . . . you’re not?”

She shot him a withering look. “I’m nobody’s bitch. That’s an offensive, derogatory, misogynistic word.”

“I don’t think he meant it like that, bae.”

“No?” she smirked, “And what about when he called me a troll? Was that intended to be a compliment? I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

A stray dog loped across her rearview. She braked to let it pass before pulling out onto Sixth Avenue. When she shifted from reverse to drive, she noticed that Nick was grinning. “It’s not funny asshole.”

Laughter spilled through his smile. “You’re trippin’ bae. Not troll as in some ugly monster. Troll as in patrol . . . as in police. Feel me?”

The dog looked up from the sidewalk as they passed. Defeated bloodshot eyes touched hers. She stopped the car.

“Miranda? What the . . .? We’re ridin’ dirty. You can’t just stop in the middle of the street.”

She fumbled through her purse and found a trail mix bar, her go-to snack between classes. “This will just take a sec.”

The musclebound money counter stepped out on Gucci’s front porch and glared a question at them. What the fuck? Nick responded by raising his index finger. One moment please.

Miranda unwrapped the breakfast bar, broke it into pieces and opened the door. The dog bounded over to her outstretched hand and devoured the food, licking her palm clean as she scratched its dirty head. “That’s a good boy.”

“Bae? Can we flex already? This neighborhood is crawlin’ with troll and I’ve got a zip of Boi and my fire on me.”

“Okay, okay.” The dog clearly wanted to come home with her. She gently pushed it away and pulled the door shut. For a moment it trotted along next to the car, but by the time she reached the light at Cervantes it was barely a speck in her mirror.

She reached for the stereo. NPR’s Acoustic Interlude came jangling through the speakers. Gillian Welch was singing “The Way It Goes” over Appalachian strings. She adjusted the volume.

He grabbed her hand. “Look at me.” Deep, soulful, almond-shaped eyes narrowed with intensity. “I wouldn’t let nobody disrespect you. If anything, I’d go to war about you.”

His grip morphed into a caress. She melted beneath his touch. The light turned green. “Which way?”

He released her hand and flipped down the sun visor, removing a rolled blunt. “To your crib? You know the way. Bust a left.”

She hesitated before tapping the blinker. “I thought you said you were getting some pills.” Her voice was weak with need. She hated the sound of it.

After an anti-Trump rally turned violent outside the Civic Center, she tripped over a rain-slicked curb on Gregory Street while running to her car, skinning her knees and injuring her back. Dr. Metzer prescribed Percocet for the pain. By the time her prescription ran out, the pain had subsided, but a new ache bloomed within her. She had fallen in love with the muted warmth of opiates. After a second script was quickly gobbled up, she was on her own, forced to overpay and scrounge and trade her Adderall for Lortab. Until Cassy Myers, her lab partner in Anatomy and Physiology, introduced her to Nick at a frat party a month earlier.

He pushed in the cigarette lighter and shook his head. “It don’t make sense to pay a dollar a milligram for pills when I’ve got some of the most fire dope in the city right here in my pocket. You heard Gucci say how pure it is.”

“Actually, he said it was purr.”

“This shit’ll make you purr.” He reached across the console and squeezed her thigh. “Just like a little kitten. Want me to fix you up a bump?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t that she was snobby and only wanted pharmaceutical grade opiates. She just didn’t want to cross that line. It was bad enough that she had graduated from popping pills to snorting them. But heroin was a Pandora’s box with an escalator inside lead­ing straight down to the bathroom floor with a needle in her arm. No way. She had a GPA to maintain, novels to write, dreams to chase.

He puffed the blunt to life. The familiar aroma of Girl Scout cookies filled her car. Such a strange name for de­signer weed, she thought, Girl Scout cookies. She was a Brownie and a Scout all through elementary school, had probably moved more crates of cookies than Gucci had dope, but she had never run across any that smelled like Nick’s stash.

There was a certain sensuality in the way he smoked, a level of intimacy and attention to detail that reminded her of his lovemaking. He took a deep pull followed by small sips, frequently turning the blunt sideways to inspect it, licking his finger and dabbing out runs as se­duc­tive tendrils of smoke drifted from his mouth up into his nose, inhaling and exhaling almost simultaneously.

He extended it toward her with one hand while reaching for his phone with the other.

She was never a big fan of weed. It made her too self-conscious. Her inner narrator was chatty enough as it was. No need to pump up the volume. But lately she found herself doing all kinds of things she didn’t normally do.

She accepted the blunt and took a tentative drag. It was moist from his lips. She wasn’t sure about any Girl Scout cookies, but she could definitely taste him. On the radio, Gillian Welch faded into a digital hiss of dead air. For a moment, the only sounds were the road noise and Nick tapping away on his phone. Then a swarm of ban­joes burst forth through the speakers, jolting her upright. A yodeler began to yodel.

Nick stopped texting and looked up. “What the fuck are we listening to?” He jabbed an insistent finger at each radio preset until he found the rap station. An autotuned emcee was crooning about kidnapping someone’s bitch if they played with his money. He began to bob his head hypnotically and settled back into his seat. She passed him the blunt.

The familiar businesses and street signs that lined Cervantes flew by in a fluorescent blur. She was stoned by Twelfth Avenue. As they neared Seventeenth, she eased into the turning lane. Maybe she would try a little bump of heroin when they got home. Just a taste.

“Don’t turn on your street,” said Nick. “Keep straight.”

She glanced over at him. He was texting again.

“I’ma get you some pills, bae.”

Her heart rate accelerated with the Avalon. The thrill of hope alone was intoxicating. She cut off a pickup as she swerved back into the middle lane. Brakes shrieked. She winced and sucked air through her teeth. “Sorry,” she mouthed into the rearview, but the truck was already surging along the right side of her car.

Through the passenger door mirror, she could see a rebel flag license plate bolted to the chrome front bumper. Muddy axles and Super Swamper tires quickly pulled even. Snarling faces, purple with rage, shook fists and shot middle fingers. She could hear them through the glass despite the rap music pumping through her speakers. “Pull over you stupid bitch!”

Still bobbing his head, Nick looked up from his phone, took another hit from the blunt and passed it to her. “Hold this.” Then he reached down the front of his jeans and produced a pistol. He didn’t wave it or even aim it at them. He just set it in his lap and clicked off the safety. With a barely perceptible raise of his dimpled chin, he asked a question, simple yet deadly. What’s up?

The truck roared off, belching exhaust as its taillights vanished over the Bayou Texar bridge. Nick stared after it, his jaw tensing and relaxing. The gun lay heavy in his lap. Though her eyes were locked on the road ahead, she could still sense it, a dark and ominous shape, seething on the perimeter of her vision. She ventured a quick glance. There it was. She absently raised the blunt to her lips for another hit.

Nick lowered the volume on the radio. “Everything good, bae?”

“Better than good.” She exhaled a torrent of smoke, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Everything’s Gucci.”

He smiled and retrieved the blunt from her trembling fingers. “There’s some apartments coming up on the right. Village on the Bluffs. Take the second entrance.”

Cervantes bent into Scenic Highway. Glimpses of Escambia Bay flickered through the oaks and pines. The sun was still high enough to sprinkle diamonds over the water. It occurred to her that Florida was shaped like an inverted pistol.

Her phone chirped. Dad was texting. She glanced at the message as she pulled into the apartment complex. Biloxi? She rolled her eyes. Her last trip to the casinos with her father cost her every dime in her purse and almost a thousand in student loans. No thanks. A speed bump rose from the asphalt unannounced. Tired shocks creaked and groaned in the immediate aftermath. The gun bounced from Nick’s lap and tumbled to the floorboard.

“What the heck?” She objected, increasingly more stoned as her adrenaline ebbed. “I thought they had to paint those yellow. It’s like a law or something.”

He reached between his Jordans for the pistol. “Pull up on that curb by the dumpster.”

She scrunched her nose and surveyed the parking lot. There was an open space between a Yukon and an Alero. “How about over there?”

He was tapping on his phone again. “Yeah. Good. Whatever.”

She pulled in, shut off the car and began checking her makeup in the mirror.

“You can’t go in with me this time, bae.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “Okay.”

He stuck the phone in his pocket. “Misty’s got a script for Roxy 30s. But she won’t even open the door if I’ve got somebody with me. Her son weighs 500 pounds. Rarely ever gets out of bed. Her apartment’s a mess . . .”

“Say no more,” said Miranda. You had me at Roxy 30s.

“There’s a cop that lives across from her. Fucks with me every time he sees me. Frisks me, threatens me with jail. Petty shit.” He thumbed the gun back on safety and held it out, handle first. “Hold this down for me. Just in case he’s snooping round.”

She hesitated. “But . . . what if he follows you back here? What if he searches my car?”

“He won’t. He’s probably on duty anyway. I just can’t get caught slippin’. With my record, I’d never see daylight again.”

The internal floodwaters of anxiety were already up to her throat. She regretted smoking the weed. Her inner narrator wasn’t helping. A gun!?! Don’t you dare Miranda. What kind of a hypocrite are you? I cannot believe you are even considering it. How many anti-gun rallies have you attended? Didn’t you just post a Gabby Giffords quote on Facebook last month? What would she think about this? What would Nancy Pelosi think about this? WHAT WOULD MICHELLE OBAMA THINK ABOUT THIS?

Why did her inner narrator sound so much like her mother? She wished she had a Xanax.

“I’m just doing this shit for you, bae. You know how I feel about pills. Want me to hit her up right now and let her know I ain’t coming? She won’t stress it. Hard as it is to get pills these days, they’ll be gone in an hour.”

“No!” She grabbed the gun and looked for a place to put it, finally settling on her purse. “Just . . . just please hurry up.”

“You sure?” he said. “I’m supposed to be getting some lean soon. Maybe tonight. If you can hold out.”

Lean. Sizurp. Codeine promethazine. Medicated cough syrup. Favored beverage of rap stars and drug dealers. Nick mixed his with Sprite. She had guzzled her share over the last month. It definitely took the edge off. But compared to snorting Roxys, it was baby aspirin.

She shook her head. “It’s fine. Really. I was just having a moment. You know I get weird when I smoke.”

“Just chill bae. You with me now. I got you.” He reached for the door handle, paused and pulled the Ziploc of heroin from his jeans. “Damn. Slippin’. Almost forgot this.”

He dropped it in her purse himself.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. As promised, here’s Chapter 1. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the dedicated Year of the Firefly page on Substack anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews and are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

👉Watch a short announcement video from the author here: Read ‘Year of the Firefly’ Free on Substack

“All of God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable . . .” —FRAN LEIBOWITZ

CHAPTER 1

Miranda had never seen a Gucci eye patch before. Funny how that was the focal point of her attention. The patch. Not the ginormous pile of cash on the table. Not the musclebound tattooed man who was counting it. Not the naked woman snuggling with the pitbull on the leather sofa. Not the oblivious little boy tapping furiously on the Xbox controller. All these storylines were riveting, but it was the designer patch that the monocle of her con­sciousness was fixed upon. She wondered if it was a fashion accessory or a medical device or both. The aspiring author and English Lit major in her needed to know.

Still tingly and warm from the blunt on the ride across the bridge, she followed with hooded eyes as its wearer rummaged through kitchen cabinets in search of a scale. He caught her staring and paused. The sculptured mus­tache and goatee that framed his mouth pulled back into a diamond- and platinum-encrusted scowl. “Yo Nick, you sure this bitch ain’t troll?”

Uncertain which was more offensive, being called a bitch or a troll, she felt her face redden with indignation as she sputtered to assemble a lethal riposte . . . something Katherine from Taming of the Shrew might serve up in her icy Shakespearean tone. Nice eyepatch . . . are you wearing matching Gucci panties?

Two things stopped her: the small arsenal of urban warfare weapons stacked on the coffee table and Nick’s firm hand on the small of her back.

“I’m positive,” he said, in that deep, confident voice that made her forget her outrage, forget she was standing in a trap house, forget the world, forget herself.

“Well she looks like troll.” Eyepatch found his scale and set it on the counter. “Like one of them redheaded CSI bitches. I don’t trust no redheads . . .”

Nick removed his hand from her back and ran his fingers through his dark unruly hair. His palm left an impression, hot against her skin. A thermonuclear hand­print. “Come on, Gucci,” he said. “You know I don’t fuck with twelve.”

Miranda stifled a giggle. His name was Gucci? Was Gucci, the company, like, secretly sponsoring drug dealers or something? She thought of her sociology professor, Dr. Bonilla, and his fiery disquisitions on consumer culture and materialism. He would choke on his own mustache if he ever crossed paths with this walking designer brand billboard.

“She ain’t gotta be twelve,” said Gucci. “She could be an informant. How do you know she ain’t wearing a wire?”

Nick glanced down at her. His eyes were dark choco­late caged in black lashes. A secret smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Because I watched her get dressed.”

His words seemed to hang in the air. She blushed, suddenly as exposed as the naked woman snoring on the couch. Gucci appraised her from over his scale. Fitting, because she felt like she was being weighed. His one eye moved up and down her body. Apparently the MeToo movement had not yet reached the criminal underworld. She wished Nick would put his arm around her.

“Don’t bring nobody else over here,” Gucci muttered as he pulled apart the Ziploc and began heaping Boi onto the didgies with a silver spoon.

Boi and didgies.

The arrival of Nick Archiletta on the timeline of her life had brought a strange new lexicon of colloquialisms and street slang. Words that did not appear in the pages of her beloved Random House College Dictionary or even the online Urban Dictionary. Sometimes it was as if he was speaking an entirely different language.

Miranda loved words. She grew up doing New York Times crossword puzzles with her dad and was a self-proclaimed etymologist by the time she reached middle school. Her plan was to write a novel after the fall se­mester and midterms, maybe a gritty romance she could self-pub and market herself. The bad boy patois of Nick’s urban ecosystem would make for snappy, realistic dia­logue. This was perhaps the sexiest thing about him. True, he was lean and handsome with just the right num­ber of tattoos. True, the danger was thrilling, the passion was electric, the money was fast, and the drugs were conven­ient. But take all that away and his vernacular alone was worth the price of admission. Especially to a word-nerd like herself.

The dope was the color of Gulf of Mexico sand, a growing anthill atop the matte black digital scale. Gucci added a little, then more, then grunted, shook his head, and sliced off the tip of the mountain, transforming it into a mesa. Satisfied, he spun the scale.

Miranda read the display. 28.7.

“Can I put some cut on it?” said Nick.

“You better.” Gucci shook a Newport from his pack and fired it up. His teeth dazzled beyond the flame. “You know how we rock, bruh. This is that good Frank White shit. Pure as your bitch.”

She winced. He pronounced pure like purr. Calling her rude names was one thing. But lazy mispronunciations she could not tolerate. They circumvented her filter, triggering a response that was almost reflexive.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is pure. P-U-R‑E. All you do is take the possessive your and stick a P in front of it. Pyour . . . Pure.” She enunciated with the exagger­ated patience of a kindergarten teacher. “You try it.”

He stared at her for a solid ten seconds. He even pursed his lips. Then he looked at Nick. “What is this crazy-ass bitch jaw-jackin’ about?”

Nick shrugged. “She takes off like that sometimes. I think it’s a college thing . . . here.” He reached in his jeans pocket, grabbed a roll of bills and tossed them across the kitchen.

Gucci caught the money, removed the rubber band and began to count.

“Everything good?” said Nick, when he reached the last hundred.

“Better than good.” The one-eyed dope dealer looked up and smiled for the first time that day. “Everything’s Gucci.”

Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization begins with Chapter 1 tomorrow and new chapters being released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the dedicated Year of the Firefly page on Substack to learn more about the novel and author, or to become a new subscriber and have chapters sent directly to your email inbox each week. If you missed yesterday’s essay from the author about the genesis of the main character, Miranda McGuire, you can read it here: To My Incarcerated Sisters: The Genesis of Miranda McGuire. There’s also a short announcement video from the author here: Read ‘Year of the Firefly’ Free on Substack

Year of the Firefly: A Miranda McGuire Novel

Awarded Honorable Mention in the 33rd annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, Mainstream/Literary Fiction category (2025).

Year of the Firefly is Book One of the Miranda Rights trilogy. Will 2020 cost Miranda everything she loves? Can she find a way home before the end of the decade? Follow her journey through the nation’s largest female prison complex in Book Two, The Weight of Entanglement, and Book Three, The Law of Momentum.

Meet Miranda McGuire. English Lit major, aspiring novelist, and snowflake activist. To say that she was raised by her bipolar father would be inaccurate. If there was a caretaker in the McGuire household after her mother bolted for the West Coast, that title would most certainly belong to Miranda.

A classic overachiever, fluent in everything from prose to politics to particle physics, she is wise beyond her eighteen years.

But a dark secret crouches in the shadow of her stellar grade point average—opioid addiction, the backwash of a pain med prescription turned toxic. As her life unravels, her ravenous hunger for pills only grows. A hunger that will compromise her morals, test her humanity, and cost her everything she loves.

Set in the Deep South during the single most dangerous year in modern American history, this novel—the first in the Miranda Rights series—chronicles a young woman’s journey through the broken criminal justice system and follows her as she attempts to weather the storm that is 2020…

Year of the virus. Year of the protest. Year of the Firefly.

REVIEWS

✨Judge’s review, 2021 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards:

“YEAR OF THE FIREFLY is a tremendous novel. From the opioid addiction that spurs the plot… to the texture of the criminal justice system that establishes such an unforgiving setting, this novel is firing on all cylinders. Miranda is a captivating main character, and her quirky nature makes her both intriguing AND unfamiliar. She’s somewhat easy to relate to, while still presenting something new to watch that I haven’t seen before. At the center of it all, of course, is Ivey’s great prose that reads smoothly and works like a foundation for the other aspects of the novel to succeed.”

✨On Amazon:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ivey does it again! This book is an emotional ride from beginning to end! The characters have depth and conviction. I can’t wait till the next installment! —D.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY 37 years on this earth. Someone sent this book and the second book in the Miranda McGuire series to my 20-year-old daughter who is currently at Lowell Correctional Institution doing twenty years. They sent them to her anonymously and so I bought them on kindle to read at the same time she is reading her physical copies. We both love the books, wish we knew who sent them so we could thank them because these are the absolute best books I’ve read in my lifetime and it’s hard to believe they are in the fiction genre because they seem more like a memoir or autobiography!!!!! Kudos to the author. —I.T.

To My Incarcerated Sisters: The Genesis of Miranda McGuire

After writing Sticks & Stones in 2017, my fourth stand-alone novel, I decided it was time for a breather. I had spent the previous seven years on my bunk, nose in my journals, pen whistling across the page, mostly oblivious to the misery and violence of the world that surrounded me. I was too busy talking to my imaginary friends, lost in the alternate realities they inhabited, jotting down plot points and pieces of dialogue. And even when I wasn’t hammering away on a project, I was busy writing a letter to some politician or director or literary agent. Writing. This is how I dealt with the reality of a 20-year mandatory bid. Not a bad way to handle the monotony of prison life. However, after burning through hundreds of ink pens and countless reams of notebook paper that spanned the length of four self-published novels, and with very little return on energy to show for the work, I figured I was overdue for a vacay. It was time to chill.

But as most authors—and songwriters and artists and designers—will testify, vacations are never really vacations. I believe this is because we are haunted subconsciously by the reality that there is only a finite amount of time to get our stories and characters on the page, to produce our magnum opuses, to do our work… The beckoning hands of that relentless invisible clock ticking away in the background inevitably lure us back to our workstations. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes we resist. Sometimes we drown out the small voice with drugs and alcohol or other frivolous distractions. But as soon as we begin creating again, a strange thing happens; consumed with our mission, a sense of contentment begins to settle over us. In fact, we are much happier at work than we were when we were wandering around in our slippers claiming to be on vacation. At least that’s how it works for me.

This is where I was when I began writing the Miranda Rights trilogy in 2019. I had been adrift for two years, questioning my previous work, not producing anything, miserable but clueless as to why. I was on the back third of my sentence. My release date was only seven years away. Mom was alive and healthy. A certain redhead had recently floated into my orbit. I had plenty to be grateful for. But there was this unshakeable disquietude riding shotgun with me everywhere I went. And I could not figure out what was up… until I began writing again. Then I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s right.”

Year of the Firefly, the first book in the series, was intended to be a stand-alone novel about a liberal female college student with an opioid habit who finds herself in a north Florida jail facing some heavy charges. I envisioned her having to learn her way around the law library and eventually winning her freedom against all odds in the tradition of David and Goliath and other underdog stories. Then she began whispering her secrets to me as characters will often do. The first major bombshell was that she was prego. Gulp. As a lifelong prisoner writing from my bunk, with no children of my own, I was completely unprepared for that. Then she told me that she had a genius-level IQ and an eidetic memory. I don’t know which was more difficult, imagining myself into the sore boobs, swollen belly, and surging hormones of a pregnant 20-year-old, or writing from the mindset of a prodigy with a photographic memory. Neither were what I signed on for when I began the journey. But getting to know Miranda and all her incarcerated allies and enemies over the five years it took to write this trilogy is one of the great privileges of my life.

When this adventure began, I had seven years left on a 20-year mandatory sentence for armed robbery. I was working in the prison infirmary and had to change jobs so I could study post-conviction law. Covid had not yet hit, Trump’s first term was drawing to a close, and I was beginning to lose hope as a writer. My books were not finding an audience on the other side of the razor wire. But I still considered it my job to shine a light. I had already written four novels examining the male prisoner experience and over the course of that period, I kept receiving emails and letters from recently released female prisoners from Lowell and Gadsden, all basically saying the same thing: “Dude, you wrote my life.” Massive compliment, by the way. Those letters and emails got me thinking it was time to write a story examining the female prisoner’s journey. The Miranda Rights trilogy is the product of that.

The following is an excerpt from the acknowledgements page:

To my incarcerated sisters, I wasn’t bullshitting in the dedication—I wrote this for you. (If the last four are any indication, you’re the only ones who’ll be reading it anyway.) Cancel culture will say that I have no right to tell this story… your story. They’ll say that straight white males should stick to straight white male subject matter. But my race is prisoner. My gender is prisoner. So, too, is my tax bracket, my religion, and my political affiliation. My mission from the gate has been to humanize us. To show that we are more than mugshots and rap sheets. Though society may say otherwise, we are not defined by the worst instances in our lives. I hope you see yourselves in Miranda, the way that I see myself in you.

Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization kicks off with an introduction tomorrow and Chapter 1 on Monday. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. 👉Watch a short announcement video from the author here: Read ‘Year of the Firefly’ Free on Substack. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the dedicated Year of the Firefly page on Substack anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com.