Coming Soon!

Letters to the Universe

Hard to believe I’m now on the verge of releasing number seven, a hybrid memoir and essay collection that spans the final nine years of a twenty-year mandatory prison sentence, an era in which I learned to conquer my demons through the redemptive power of writing. Is it Pulitzer caliber? Probably not. But it’s a massive accomplishment in my little corner of captivity, a bookend to a fantastic journey, the best I could do between the years of 2014–2023.

Letters to the Universe, available this Fall from Astral Pipeline Books.

(Cover image by Bobby Marko of wefoundadventure.com)

‘The Universe’

Excerpt from my upcoming hybrid memoir

Greetings, friends. It’s been a minute since I’ve been on here sharing anything new… February, to be exact, when I posted my last essay Take Me To Church. A move and a new job assignment have kept me away from my desk quite a lot these past few months. But I’ve been writing when I can, dividing that time between the third installment of the Miranda Rights series and a new project—a hybrid memoir that began as an anthology of essays and has grown from there. Here’s an excerpt from the latter, the opening paragraphs of “Part One: Letters to the Universe”…

The Universe. It’s such a trite and new-agey catch-all, isn’t it? Something David Mitchell’s Dwight Silverwind might allude to with a sublime smile as he sinks into the lotus position and contemplates the mystical beyond. What does it even mean, the Universe? Vast, infinite space? The cosmos? Every spinning planet, every cratered moon, every lonely star? That’s part of it, I think.

The chain gang etymologist in me wants to dissect the word, to separate prefix from root. Uni-verse. Uni meaning “one,” and verse meaning “song.” One song. One continuous freestyle of a song echoing down through the centuries, pulsing in the present, and unspooling out over the horizon into the distant future. A collaboration in which every living organism that ever was and will ever be is a featured artist. I dig this interpretation. But is it true? Maybe. But only in the abstract.

Is it merely another way to approach the idea of a divine architect? Like in Giants when Pharaoh wondered why Izzy was always popping off about “the Universe” when it was obvious that he really meant God. This rubs closer against the truth. Still, to reduce the full weight of the concept into some generic euphemism for the Creator is to remain wide of the mark.

It could be that the Universe will always mean different things to different people. We may just have to leave it there. But before my ADHD kicks in and sends me bounding off in the direction of another shiny thought, I want to state, for the record, my understanding of the word. Especially since it’s emblazoned across the cover of this book.

When I say Universe, I’m talking all of the above. From the great spiral galaxies to our ancient ancestors to every living being currently inhabiting this blue-green rock we call Earth. Every charged particle, every blade of grass, every pulsation of light and vibration of sound. And yes, the divine intelligence and order behind it all. This is what I mean by “the Universe.”

But I don’t worship it like a god. Nor do I fear it. I just trust it. And I believe there is magic in our connection to it.

When there is a burning desire within us, and this desire is colored with emotion and concentrated into powerful thought waves that are then bounced off a satellite in some distant outpost of the same Universe, they eventually boomerang back to us, manifesting in our lives, pointing the way forward, and revealing the obstacles that run counter to the fulfillment of this profound need, whatever it may be, until the mission is successful.

But it’s not all wanting and wishing and waiting. There are other key ingredients as well; blue collar principles like discipline and sacrifice immediately come to mind. And faith. Faith is mandatory. “Live as if the Universe is rigged in your favor,” Rumi whispers across the oceans of time. I hear and obey.

For Jude

This distinguished gentleman is my great-nephew Jude, the only child of my niece, Hannah, and her husband, Sully. Jude is a Rhizo kid which means he was born with a lethal form of skeletal dysplasia known as RCDP (Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata).

Since entering the world in 2014, much of his life has been spent under the harsh fluorescent lights of neonatal care units, ever bracing for the next IV, the next seizure, the next operation. At age three, Jude has endured more pain than most of us will experience in a lifetime. His journey has certainly put my own hardships and struggles in perspective.

Because of the rarity of RCDP – fewer than 100 known cases worldwide – Rhizo kids and their families suffer mostly in silence, with astronomical hospital bills and little or no support from charitable organizations, their voices lost in the shuffle of more prevalent diseases such as cancer.

Sticks & Stones is now available on Amazon. If you purchase Sticks & Stones in any format, 100 percent of the profits will go to Jude. To learn more about Rhizo kids, please visit http://www.rhizokids.com.

Sticks & Stones

I was hoping to have this out for Christmas but we ran into a few post-production snags with Create Space so it looks like this one is going to be a New Year’s baby. Probably for the best since the novel takes place in 2018 anyway. It’s about a former KGB agent who gets abducted by aliens… definitely not. Come on, it’s a Malcolm Ivey novel. You know what to expect: crack pipes, syringes, sex, violence and dialogue slathered with f-bombs… That’s actually not true either.

This one is not even about a prisoner. It’s about an ex-prisoner. And it’s PG-13! Or at least as PG-13 as I get. After spending two years writing On the Shoulders of Giants, I wanted to shift gears and do something outside my comfort zone. Something challenging. And believe me, writing about the free world when you haven’t experienced it since long before the advent of Facebook, Netflix, or the smartphone is definitely a challenge. In addition, I plan on posting a new chapter to this site every Tuesday and Friday and my devout senior relatives and sheltered Christian nieces don’t need the harsh reality of prison life shoved in their faces twice a week.

But the main reason for this stylistic pivot is my great-nephew Jude, a special needs child from Charlotte, NC, and one of fewer than 100 RHIZO kids worldwide (to learn more, click on the “Incredible Jude” tab on this site). I’ve been wanting to do something special for him since With Arms Unbound, but there is an element of darkness in each of my first three novels that felt incongruous to his innocence. Not so with Sticks & Stones. It’s full of love and light and laughter. At least I think so. Hopefully the perfect fit.

So all the profits from this one will go to Jude. Judging by the torrential success of my other novels, this means I will soon be sending him a check for a whopping $62.75! But that’s sixty-two dollars more than I’ve been able to send him during his first three-and-a-half years of life. I’m just happy to be contributing. And you never know… we live in a world of infinite possibilities, right? Happy New Year everyone.

On the Shoulders of Giants

Here’s the back cover copy from my new novel, On the Shoulders of Giants, currently in production and due out this fall…

The last time Izzy James saw his mother’s trailer was through the rear window of a Dodge Aires driven by a social worker with the Florida Division of Children and Families. He was four years old. He spent the remainder of his childhood bouncing around the state foster care system. Always the outsider, introverted and awkward, he assumed he was exempt from things like friendship and love … until he met Scarlett McGhee.

Pharaoh Sinclair was born on a prison van. The illegitimate child of an unknown father and a crackhead mother. He grew up on the sidewalks of the Azalea Arms housing project, where gunshots and police sirens were as commonplace as the stench of the neighboring landfill. Molded by hustlers and pushers, with the dope game in his DNA, the lone soft spot in his concrete heart was reserved for his baby sister, Symphony. But could he protect her from the same streets that raised them?

From the sugar-white sand dunes of Pensacola Beach to the murderous Arthur G. Dozier reform school, from strip clubs to emergency rooms, from traphouses to courthouses to prison cells, On the Shoulders of Giants chronicles the intersecting journeys of a foster kid and a projects kid as they battle and stumble their way through adolescence into adulthood.

An exploration of race, part memoir, part coming-of-age, part thriller, part love story. This transcendent novel defies genre. A book within a book. More than a story, a living organism. A legacy. The only child of Ezra “Izzy” James.