Ten years ago, around this time, I put out my second novel, With Arms Unbound. I remember exactly where I was when I etched that final period onto the paper: Blackwater Correctional Facility. LeBron James was still playing for the Heat, Ryan Tannehill was the Dolphins QB, and Barack Obama was midway through his second term. The dominant question in my mind back then was Am I really a writer? I still feel that way now with eight books in the rearview. I have always considered myself an estranged musician who happened to write novels because I couldn’t get my hands on a guitar in prison. Check out what I wrote in the afterward of With Arms Unbound―

I was a songwriter before I was a book writer. Music has always consumed me. I held onto the bars of my crib and bounced to The Lawrence Welk Show. (Unfortunately, holding onto bars would become a theme in my life.) I danced with my father to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, wanted to be a rapper when I first heard Rakim, and fell in love with the guitar as a teenager in prison, back when prisons supported that type of thing.

Although the callouses on my fingertips faded years ago, I still consider myself an estranged musician and long for the curved and contoured feel of my old acoustic like the body of a distant lover.

But since I arrived in federal prison nine months ago, I’ve been playing the hell out of any guitar I can get my hands on. Including the one in the above pic. Not exactly a Martin, right? The neck is warped, the strings are nylon, and the tuning pegs are rusty. But I’m so grateful to be able to play again. And after almost 20 years of silence, my fingers surprisingly remember! Muscle memory. I’m actually better than I ever was. So now I’m writing songs about the characters in these books and the people who have wandered in and out of my life over the course of this beautiful journey. Can’t wait to sit at a booth at a downtown Pensacola book fair, boots kicked up on a table stacked with novels, playing songs about Izzy and Pharaoh and Rayla and CJ and Hustle and Miranda McGuire and this supposed punishment that turned out to be the greatest reward I could ever hope for.

Rock on my friends. Wishing you momentum.

—September 14, 2024