Bad news, my friends. Many of you might recall me exuberantly declaring that I would be at a federal halfway house by November of this year. Itโs a date weโve had circled since I first arrived. (In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law that allowed for inmates to serve up to 10% of their sentences in halfway houses/home detention. My actual release date on a 288-month sentence is November 2026. March was my 20-year anniversary of incarceration. I am well over 90% done with this long journey.) Even though the halfway house is not really โhomeโ; Iโd be able to work a job for my final year, save money, spend weekends at Momโs house, and make a smooth transition back into society.
Unfortunately, this will not be happening.
Due to โbudget constraintsโ in the federal B.O.P. (the Bureau of Prisons), myself and thousands of others recently had our halfway house time severely slashed from 365 days down to just the final 60 days of our sentences. Barely enough time to find a job, find housing, and navigate a world that did not even have smart phones when many of us left. Iโm lucky to have a strong support system and a place to go. Some of these guys will be starting from scratch. In an inflationary America with little or no work experience, the temptation to return to crime for a quick buck and a little stability will be difficult for some of these men to resist.
Is this good for society? Ninety percent of federal prisoners are returning to their communities one day. Is dropping them off with little or no transition period going to solve the problem of rampant crime? Is this a smart way to combat recidivism? Is this in the interest of public safety? Not by my calculus.
Again, the B.O.P. cites budget constraints as the reason for this head scratcher of a policy change. They use โlimited resources, chronic understaffing, and deteriorating facilitiesโ as their justification to reduce the halfway house time to 60 days. (Believe me, I know all about deteriorating facilities. I am currently housed in a mold-ridden, roach-infested prison that was built in the 1930s. This place should have been condemned a couple decades ago.) But is not allowing tens of thousands of people to go to halfway houses and home detention going to โeaseโ overcrowding? These same dilapidated, understaffed prisons are going to be more packed, more dangerous, and more expensive to run with a yearโs worth of inmates who would have been in the halfway houses now needing to be fed, clothed, housed, and supervised.
The crazy thing is that it costs MORE to keep us here for longer. Prisons have overhead expenses that do not apply to halfway houses. And definitely not to home detention.
So to recap: This recent change lowers the offenderโs chance for success by limiting the window of opportunity to transition and thereby increasing the chances of recidivism. It also increases overcrowding, makes institutions less safe, puts a greater strain on the workforce . . . And it costs more. A commonsense solution would be instead to immediately release all the Second Chance Act-eligible inmates to halfway houses and/or home detention for those with a verified address. But they wonโt. Why? It makes too much sense. This is the B.O.P.โBackwards On Purpose.
โApril 3, 2025
*** An update! I received some exciting news after I typed this essay. Three days after the BOP updated the policy that reduced my halfway house time down to a basically nothingโa few weeksโthey rescinded the order! So now I am back to the veryย real possibility of being home for Thanksgiving. (Is it me or are we living in the era of thrilling highs an crushing lows? Just when I thought last weekโs stock market ride was about as dizzying as things could get…)
Imagine a scenario where an American was removed from society for 20 years. Weโll say it was voluntary, for the purposes of this essay. No internet, no cable television; his main source of information, the ABC World News at 6:30pm EST every night along with the political roundtable shows on Sunday mornings. Kinda like a social experiment in a controlled environment that examines the prolonged effect of the legacy media on the human brain. What would this personโs political opinions and beliefs look like based on his daily diet of news consumption? How might his worldview be shaped after a couple of decades of David Muir, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos?
Dystopian as it may sound, you actually do know someone like this. You are currently reading his words.
When it became fashionable to distrust the media and โfake newsโ became a national catchphrase, I didnโt get it. Why would anyone not trust Cecilia Vega? Why would respected journalists like Jonathan Karl and Martha Raddatz tell bald-faced lies to the American people? I still donโt believe they would. But a couple things happened over the last few years that at least caused me to reevaluate my blind trust in network news. The most alarming and egregious of which happened during the January Sixth riot . . .
Amid the live ABC News footage of gallows being erected, chants of โhang Mike Pence!โ, police being beaten with Trump 2020 flags, windows being busted, and members of Congress stacking tables and chairs as barricades, another ominous clip was woven into the feedโthe image of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jrโs fiancรฉe at the time, laughing and dancing at what appeared to be a party in the West Wing. I think she might have even had a champagne flute in her hand.
This was a tipping point for me. The moment when my disgust and outrage boiled over. The fact that this family of billionaires from Queens, New York, had convinced rural America that they were somehow their champions was bad enough, but now they were celebrating as democracy collapsed? Unreal.
So I did what every other writer does in times of distress and despairโI grabbed my pen and wrote about it. The result was a scathing indictment of this modern-day Nero fiddling in the Oval Office while the Capitol burned. I titled the essay Final Act of Cowardice, slapped it in an envelope, and mailed it out to be posted on the Malcolm Ivey website.
A year later, I was watching ABCโs โThis Week with George Stephanopoulosโ when a guest mentioned in passing how the footage of Guilfoyle dancing was actually from a previous White House function and did not occur on Jan 6. Wait, what? This seems like something that should have been vociferously condemned, investigated, and corrected in the interest of capital T, Truth. Instead, barely a footnote.
Shortly after this revelation, I watched a former White House staffer testify before the House January Sixth Committee that the president had to be restrained by Secret Service in order to be kept from joining the rioters/insurrectionists/sightseers that day. Restrained. An allegation that Trump vehemently denies, but thatโs not the point. I accused him of cowering in the safety of his office while his supporters and Capitol Police paid the consequences for his reckless words and his inability to admit defeat. I even included it in the title of the essay. While it is inarguable that all those peopleโand America as a wholeโdid pay a hefty price for his reckless words and inability to accept defeat (he still doesnโt), I doubt that even his most vocal critics would classify him as a coward. Donald Trump is many things, but a coward is not one of them. The world learned this in real time on July 13, 2024, when his kneejerk reaction to an assassination attempt was to pop back up, raise his fist, and yell, โFight! Fight!โ
Sidenote: The intent of this essay is not to capitulate. Iโm not a tech oligarch seeking to expand my empire, or a Democratic senator in a red district, or an Ivy League dean in fear of losing federal funding. Iโm just a prisoner. A guy whoโs changed his life while serving his time and hopes to reenter a society not teetering on the brink of civil war, economic collapse, crumbling infrastructure, and totalitarian government. But Iโm also a writer. And a writerโs job is to tell the truth.
Back to last yearโs MAGA rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One of the interesting things about this day in relation to the media was how the crowd quickly turned on the press correspondents who were covering the event. โYou did this!โ they shouted in the eerie aftermath of the shooting. Of course, the journalists they were referring to were pretty much everyone except Fox News.
Ever since I arrived at my first federal prison last year, Iโve been fascinated by the cable news experience and how the reporting varies on a given topic depending on which channel youโre on. Itโs like two different countries almost. In a federal joint, this difference is further underscored by the fact that televisions are segregated like Jim Crow Era water fountains in the Deep South. The โwhite TVโ is mostly Fox News interspersed with a little History Channel here and there when the 24-hour news cycle gets redundant. The โblack TVโ is mostly BET with either MSNBC or CNN for news. Each station is transmitted through headphones. Flipping back and forth between the two has been a revelation for me.
For instance, when CNN was reporting on the marketโs recent nosedive due to tariff fears and consumer uncertainty, Fox was hammering transgender athletes competing in female sports . . . When Fox is highlighting how we are 39 trillion in debt with a 1.9 trillion deficit and how itโs fiscally irresponsible to borrow money just to give it to other nations via USAID, CNN was talking about a looming โconstitutional crisisโ and how the current administration might defy judgesโ orders . . . When the editor of the progressive Atlantic magazine was accidentally invited to a Signal group chat full of Trumpโs highest ranking Cabinet members who were discussing the planned bombing of Houthi rebels two hours before it happened and sending each other muscle emojis as the targets were struck, Fox News quickly pivoted to a high-ranking MS-13 gang member who was nabbed just outside of D.C.
Similar to our current political climate, one side is clearly rooting for the other to fail. But contrary to popular belief, I donโt think that the media brass โhatesโ Donald Trump. I think he is the only hope of prolonging their inevitable demise, even if ratings are currently down. Just today, Iโve been listening to coverage of him floating the idea of a third term. And another story about him going after the nationโs largest law firms. This is headline gold for news organizations. And every day, itโs something new and disruptive. No other president is giving the media that.
And then there is radio . . .
My friends on the right will disagree with this, but one exception to all this partisan media animosity is NPR. Yes, certain shows, hosts and guests obviously have their own views. But there is nothing remotely polemic or political about Science Friday or A Way with Words or Hidden Brain or Marketplace. I owe so much to National Public Radio. Far from home, in solitary confinement cells, through hurricanes and wildfires and cancel culture and presidential elections and war and pandemics . . . NPR has been an amazing source of fact-based education. They are part of the reason an autodidact prisoner like the author of this essay even knows what โautodidactโ means ๐ Unfortunately, NPR and PBS are now in Trumpโs crosshairs. I hope the opposition can find a way to resist him on this. Time will tell.
Thatโs it for this week. See yโall next Tuesday. Stay safe out there.
Iโve been on political hiatus since the election. You might not have noticed out there in the real world of pricey eggs, Tesla terrorism, plummeting markets, transgender athletes, and airplanes loaded with shackled Venezuelan nationals zipping across the sky, but itโs true. In fact, the last thing I said that was even remotely political was a short post on the day after the election that went like this:
โSo after pulling off the greatest political upset of all time in 2016, Trump has just engineered the greatest political comeback of all time in 2024. And it looks like Republicans will occupy both chambers of Congress to get his agenda rolling, along with a Supreme Court already stocked with his appointees. Anyone who has ever read my essays and books knows I am not a fan. But he won. Both the electoral and the popular vote. America has spoken. Now itโs time to move forward. Trump is no traditional Republican. Heโs the ultimate wild card. These next four years are going to be interesting. While Iโm worried about how his second term will affect the judicial system in the long run, I am happy for the J-Sixer who lives in my unit who is now in line for an immediate pardon. I am happy for American businesses. Happy for the economy. Happy for those war-torn nations on the other side of the world that he has promised to bring peace. But most of all Iโm happy for those of you who have wished and wanted and waited for this since he last left office. My friends. My family. You know who you are. I love yโall regardless of who is in the White House. Stay safe out there. There is no them. Only us.โ
Many things have changed in the whirlwind first two months of this second Trump administration. And it would be easy for me to write a scathing disquisition on the policies that I find revolting. Iโm sure I will at some point. But for now Iโm resisting my reactionary tendencies, listening to a lot of Brian Kilmeade and Bill OโReilly on the local Fox News affiliate as a counterbalance to my normal NPR diet, and trying to get a full grip on that slippery thing we call โThe Truth.โ
One thing I do find fascinating about this pivotal moment in history is how my brothers and sisters on the Left are currently wandering the political wilderness, licking their wounds, fighting amongst themselves, seeking a sign, awaiting a hero to emerge and point the way forward. Josh Shapiro? Wes Moore? John Fetterman? Gretchen Whitmer? Pete Buttigieg?
Whoever it is needs to speak directly to blue collar American males. No matter how you feel about Donald Trump, I think we can all agree that heโs done a masterful job at making it unmanlyโif not downright un-Americanโto vote Democrat. Itโs no coincidence that he was receiving standing ovations at UFC fights, Nick Bosa of the 49ers was doing the Trump dance after sacking opposing QBs, Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, Dana White . . . All the alphas were backing Donald.
Iโve been banging this drum for years. Long before the current wave of eggheads and pollsters and pundits started pontificating about this phenomenon in the aftermath of the 2024 election. The following are links to just a few of the essays Iโve written on the subject, dating back to 2018 . . .
There are other labels and perceptions that Democrats will have to overcome during the next four years as well. Regardless of who they anoint as their fearless leader, there are some tough questions they are going to have to ask themselves. About class and race and gender and labor and the economy and the environment and education and the direction this nation is headed. They appear scattered at the moment. Lost. Adrift. But then so did Republicans on January 7th, 2021.
These next few essays will be examining the Left and the Right and where weโre going from here. Guaranteed to offend. My apologies in advance ๐ Wishing you momentum.
โMarch 23, 2025
[This essay is the first in the Continental Rift series. See Continental Rift II…]
A hero of mine just lost his home in a California wildfire. Heโs more than just my hero; heโs a national treasure. A Made-in-America success story. Steven Pressfield. Mom saw him on Oprahโs Super Soul Sunday a decade ago and ordered me his book on maximizing creative potential. Youโve probably heard me talk about it before. Itโs called The War of Art. If there is any creative endeavor that is tugging at youโa screenplay, a novel, a startup, a nonprofit for at-risk teensโI implore you to get this massive little paperback. Iโve probably ordered more than ten of them since 2014. Every time I meet a fellow writer or seeker at a new prison, I end up leaving them my copy when I transfer.
War of Art is not his only book. His most popular work was made into a movie featuring Will SmithโThe Legend of Bagger Vance. Heโs written other screenplays and books as well. Fiction and nonfiction. After driving semis and crisscrossing the U.S. during the late โ60s and โ70s, hellbent on destroying himself, doing everything except the one thing he was born to do, he finally began banging out his first story on an old typewriter while living in a van. When he finished that one, he immediately began the next. Forty years later, heโs still writing. Still living his message: Do the work.
I had been telling Shonda I wanted to write him and send him some of my novels since we first started Astral Pipeline Books in 2020. Another letter to the Universe. Iโve written hundreds over the years. Presidents, professors, producers, politicians . . . But Steven Pressfield was not just some industry guy I wanted to make an elevator pitch to. He was my guru. His book gave me the blueprint on how to conquer myself daily and approach the craft like a professional. Without his guidance, there would be no On the Shoulders of Giants. No Miranda Rights series. No Stick & Stones.
I was in between state and federal prison when I finally began the letter. I wrote it in pencil on the floor of a jail cell in Milton, Florida, around Christmas of 2023. The Milton Hilton. I might have procrastinated a little longer if not for a gentle nudge from Shonda who told me he was nearing 80 years old. I had no idea.
I donโt expect responses to my letters anymore. Half the time, the boxes of books we send get intercepted by gatekeepers and assistants and are probably disposed of with the rest of the junk mail. I donโt take it personal. My job is to write the best books I can and send them all over the world. Exhaust every avenue. This is the one thing I can controlโthe work. And the work is its own reward. (I learned this from Steven Pressfield.)
So you can imagine my reaction when he wrote me back! He didnโt just write me back. He sent a box of his own books to Momโs house. Leather-bound collectors type stuff, hardcovers, titles I have not yet read. Very cool. He said he enjoyed reading Letters to the Universe. And he offered to buy me dinner when I get out. The return address on his letter was Malibu, California.
My mind keeps going back to the opening pages of War of Art where he describes his writing processโputting on his boots with special shoelaces from his niece, his lucky hoodie, a charm he got from a gypsy in France, his military dog tags with the name โLargoโ on them, aiming a tiny cannon his friend brought him back from Morro Castle in Cuba at his chair to fire off inspiration, going through a few other little ritualistic things . . . then beginning the dayโs hunt. Will it be good? Doesnโt matter. Doing the work is his chief concern. After a few hours in the story-world, he would hit a point of diminishing returns, shut down shop for the day, copy his progress on a disc and lock it in his van for safety โin case of a fire.โ I remember reading this for the first time and thinking, โCome on, man. Stashing a copy in the van in case of a fire. Thatโs a little overkill.โ
Yeah, not so much.
I hope he had time to prepare. I hope he was able to gather all those little items that have been part of his process over the years. The cannon, the laces, the Largo dog tag . . . I hope his current work-in-progress was saved to a thumb drive in his vehicle, just like in War of Art. I doubt he grabbed my books. Iโm pretty sure they were low on the list of things to shove in the bag during the chaos of evacuation. I keep thinking about them too though, my books. All the love and struggle and hope tied up in those words, now embers 2,000 miles across the country, swirling in the Santa Ana winds.
Mostly, Iโm just glad he made it out. โThe most important things in life arenโt things.โ I was on the fence about writing this. Especially since he hasnโt said anything about it on Substack to date. Heโs not the type of dude to post about things like this. A book, absolutely. But a drive-by tweet or TikTok video lamenting his own misfortune? I wouldnโt hold my breath. Heโs from a bygone era, one where men donโt wear lifeโs injustices on their sleeves like badges of honor. And Iโm definitely not trying to capitalize on his misfortune. Again, I debated even writing this. I told Shonda as much on the phone the other night. But as soon as we hung up and I was walking back to my cell, I spotted a book by the stairwell. (I stop for abandoned books in prison the way some people stop for stray animals out there in society. I canโt resist.) The cover art was a fiery scene. Burning ships in harbor. When I reached for it, I spotted the author and title. Tides of War by Steven Pressfield.
A green light from the Universe.
If you have not yet read War of Art, you should interpret this message as your own little green light from the Universe and order yourself a copy. Itโs a small book that coincides perfectly with the New Yearโs resolutions you just set. And it supports a guy who just lost his home.
I was in the Federal Detention Center in Oklahoma City for a couple weeks last month. Flying Con Air from a Central Florida prison to another gated community in Indiana. Hopefully my last time ever traveling with the feds. Miserable experience. Shackles, handcuffs, waist chain, black box. Impossible to eat, or scratch my ear, or blow my nose . . . But while in the holding cell, I overheard two young men discussing books.
โMan, that thing said โSensational New York Times Bestsellerโ and it was garbage!โ one said. โI need to write a book.โ
โItโs easy now,โ his homeboy answered. โBetween AI and talk-to-text, the books write themselves. All you gotta do is feed it an idea, pay somebody to design a badass cover, and then pump it on social media. Once it goes viral, you already knowโinstant millions.โ
No shit. Instant millions? Who knew? ๐
I really wanted to interject that Iโve been writing novels since 2011. Novels with badass covers and intricate plots, stories full of conflict and tension that Iโve poured my heart and soul into, plotlines that AI could never invent. Books that Iโve been pumping on social media since Obama was president. And so far . . . No millions. Instant or otherwise.
I used to fear AI. I even wrote about it in Letters to the Universe. Check out this excerpt:
Which leads me to this memoir, if thatโs what this is, this collection of essays written over the last nine years at five different prisons. Hybrid memoir? It almost feels pretentious to be writing this at all. Like an unknown band putting out a greatest hits album. I guess in some ways Iโm attempting to write my future into existence, that oak and acorn thing again. But with the tectonic plates of time shifting, and the great and terrible Artificial Intelligence cresting in the cosmos and on the verge of crashing into our planet like some digital tsunami, itโs beginning to feel like now or never. Pretty soon AI will be producing works that rival the masterpieces of men like David Foster Wallace and David Mitchell in a fraction of the time. The market will be flooded with synthetic brilliance and creativity. This is bad for established authors, but itโs horrible for unknown writers like myself.
Or is it?
Maybe there will be a backlash, a rage against the artificial machine. Maybe a pro-human movement will kick up like the Buy American response to all the outsourcing and offshoring of the early 2000s and usher in a new era. Maybe in this brave new world of computer-generated storytelling, the authorโs backstory will inch to the forefront, and the story behind the stories will lend an authenticity to the overall reading experience. To cop David Mitchell yet again in this little rambling soliloquy, โSuch elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.โ
But today, 1000 miles from home, 20 years and 8 books into this prison sentence, my mind keeps going back to those two young men in that Oklahoma holding cell. They were really just trying to figure out a route to get rich quick. A shortcut. Thatโs the American way, right? Canโt fault them for that. But is it really the American way? Nah. Maybe the American dream. Maybe . . . But upon further review, I think the American way is about hard work and sacrifice. Showing up every day, grinding through adversity, refusing to give up. If I would have known back when I first started writing Consider the Dragonfly that I would go on to produce 8 books while in prison and none of them would be bestsellers, I mightโve dropped my pen then and there.
What a colossal mistake that would have been.
Had I quit, or chased some shortcut by outsourcing all the work to a computer program in the pursuit of instant millions, I would have missed my blessing. I would have missed the transformational journey of all those hours logged, all those years of sweat and solitude, all that time spent writhing on the cell floor in search of the perfect word, hunting it like a piece of crack. Soul-sculpting, character-building years. And I would have missed the unparalleled exhilaration of writing โThe Endโ on the final page of a long project, of slaying that dragon, of standing over it and growling โRest in peace motherfuckerโ as Steven Pressfield says in his magisterial War of Art . . . then immediately starting the next one. AI could never replicate that.
Just finished the final book in aย trilogyย that examines the female journey through the criminal justice system. If you reside on the far left, you may be wondering what right a 50-year-old male has to tell such a story. You may think that only incarcerated females should write about incarcerated females. If your political home is on the far right, you may be wondering what pronoun I prefer. What my preferred gender is. We live in strange times. The truth is that Iโm a writer. And it is the writerโs mission to imagine himself into the lives of others. To feel what they feel, to see what they see, to love and hate and fear as they do. I admit that Iโm glad this series is over. Iโve been living in the head of this fictional girl for five years now. Sweating her legal deadlines, feeling her longing, dealing with her shit. Nice to be back to just having my own 50-year-old dude problems . . . But there is a point to this rambling little soliloquy, and itโs not just โLook at me, I wrote a book!โ If anyone out there has an incarcerated friend in any state, Iโd like to send them theย series, free. Just shoot me their info.
Excerpt from Letters to the Universe. Wrote this in the run-up to the 2020 election. Itโs probably even more relevant today . .
Manhood
When did the GOP become the party of the alpha male? Somewhere over the last few years, the Right found its rugged โGod, guns and countryโ swagger while the Left was reduced to a bunch of snowflake socialists more concerned with transgender bathroom preferences than the issues facing the average American. Fair or not, this is the perception. And in this era of fake news and alternative facts, perception trumps reality. Especially in this era.
But I refuse to be sucked in. Iโve done enough herd-following for one lifetime. Wasted too many years ignoring that small voice inside telling me whatโs right (or muffling it with chemicals). These last 14 years in the joint have been a massive rebuilding project for me. Lots of soul-searching. My father did the best he could for a man who struggled with multiple demons, but he died relatively young. The absence of a strong male figure in my life left me wondering what manhood actually looked like. The gang-banger? The knockout artist? The bodybuilder? The lifer playing with his kids in visitation? The Christian on his knees? The Muslim making his salat? The quiet guard pulling shift work? The abusive one going above and beyond? The warden? The governor? President Obama? President Trump?
This is what I have come to believe: A man treats others with the exact amount of respect he demands for himself. He is confident but not arrogant, strong but not oppressive, kind but not soft. His will is iron, just like his word, and he finishes whatever he starts. He doesnโt take things personally . . . unless they are. Heโs not thin-skinned or combative. He knows what heโs capable of and lets his actions speak. He believes in second chances. He understands how dangerous the extremes are and makes his home in the realm of moderation. He stands up for women and sees his own children in all children. He knows how fortunate he is to have been born on American soil, in American skin, and realizes that he could have just as easily been born in a Guatemalan body. He appreciates the risks that fathers and mothers from impoverished nations face in order to give their families the opportunity of a better life . . . because he knows he would do the same thing if it came down to it.
Again, this is just my version. You probably have your own. One thing is for sure: neither party has a monopoly on manhood. I have brothers, cousins and friends on both sides of the aisle who embody much of the above. But I donโt see a lot of it in D.C. these days.
Excited to announce that The Law of Momentum is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever fine books are sold. The fact that its launch date coincides with Election Day is no accident. If youโve read the first two books in the series, you can probably guess why . . . Itโs become a tradition for me to post the Acknowledgements of each new release, since many of you guys whose names are mentioned have never actually read one of my books and might not otherwise know. (Wtf!) Just wanted you to know that I love and appreciate your friendship and support over the last two decades. And if you donโt see your name here, check the other 7 books. Read the other 7 books. I left breadcrumbs everywhere.
Acknowledgements
August 22, 2024. As I sit here on my bunk drafting what will be the final acknowledgements of the Miranda Rights trilogy with the Democratic National Convention thundering from my headphones and a release date that is suddenly monthsโas opposed to decadesโaway, my mind keeps returning to the women who populate the pages of this book. Tasha and her maternal guilt and pride, Tussie and her dementia, the fearless recklessness of Daphne Throckmorton, the sarcasm and stoicism of Dixie, the tragedy of Amity . . . even characters like Yani and Vanessa. These women having been living in my head for so long, I keep catching myself worrying about them as if theyโre real people. Especially since most of them are serving life.
As the series wound down, I was careful to leave each of them a little daylight. A little hope for freedom. But itโs sad to realize that in a story that addresses issues such as undiagnosed mental illness, systemic failure, institutional drug abuse, and predatorial staff members like Jason Grantham, the only imaginative stretch, the one area where I took a little artistic license, was when I offered these ladies hope. Because for those serving life and de facto life sentences in Floridaโespecially those who have exhausted their post-conviction legal remediesโthere is no hope. Not at the moment, at least. Life means life in the Sunshine State and there is no parole. No incentive to grow, no finish line to cross, no mechanism in place to earn oneโs way home through years of exemplary behavior and a demonstrated commitment to rehabilitation and education. If youโve read Letters to the Universe, particularly the โPolitics and Reformโ section, then you know I intend to spend the rest of my life fighting for this change. In the current political climate, things arenโt looking too promising. But the pendulum will swing again, and when it does, weโll be there.
Special thanks to my sweet Mom who types, and my lovely Shonda who handles interior formatting and cover design. This is a massive understatement though. These amazing women do much more than that. They form the unsung two thirds of this Ivey experiment. Without them, there would be no books . . . and Iโd be lost.
Big hugs, high fives and fist bumps to readers Janet Zimmerman, Rachel Schenck, Josh Wolford, Deborah Hinton, Jo Vernier, Shae Shae, Karen Vazquez, Anna Knapp, Cameron Terhune and Sarah Voorheis. There are thousands of other authors in the world. Hundreds of thousands. Many with the full power of the Big Six publishing firms behind them and plush high-rises full of professional and intelligent people working to ensure that their novels are pitch-perfect, slickly packaged, and lining the shelves of every brick-and-mortar bookstore in America and beyond. The fact that you guys invest your time and your heart reading books that were written in prison and produced by our little family-owned operation means everything. You are a major part of this.
I also want to thank the ladies at Gadsden Correctional for keeping my novels on the preferred reading shelf in the library. I could not receive a higher compliment. I realize this honor has a lot to do with Marlo Knapp who pushes my books like Throkkie pushes Suboxone strips. Thanks Marlo. I owe a similar debt of gratitude to my good friend Sheena Law who keeps my name ringing at Lowell (when sheโs not busy nurturing rescue dogs).
In addition, I gotta show some love to Tommy Roland who was born since the last book came out. Beginning with the elder statesman, Jude, Iโve welcomed seven nephews and two nieces since I began this writing journey. The acknowledgements sections of the last six novels have chronicled every new arrival over the years. Iโm looking forward to relinquishing my role as the uncle in prison and spending the next chapter of my life as the uncle roaring in the bleachers at football games and applauding at ballet recitals. Almost home.
Without going into a lot of detail, I also want to acknowledge the unconditional love and strength of Rhizo mom Marie Aspley and her beautiful daughter Callie. โHeaven awaits your heart and flowers bloom in your name.โ
To my good friends Marcia Ensminger and the man known only as โPilot,โ I hope Iโm not blowing your cover when I say Wishing you a happily ever after!
Last but never least, I want to thank the people who inspire me mostโHarry โChinoโ Tipton and his sweet mom Kyong who sat next to me and my mom at five different prison visitation parks over the last 20 years. Also, Patrick Odom (itโs almost over, bro), Chad Mattson, Megan Siefert, Tristan and Dara Stokes; Leah, Avery, and Nicolas Dorris; the Skills Program faculty and partici-pants at FCI Coleman; Mike Da Barber; my bandmates Jean โVennyโ Ferreira, D, Martin, and Ghost; fellow writer Isa โJ-9โ Thompson; to Teddy Stokes who read Year of the Firefly and immediately drew up a post-conviction motion for Miranda (look for it on malcolmivey.com soon); to my boy Ernie Davis; Matthew Perry, Josh Hite, Jeff Mitchell; Kelly and Marcus Conrad; my friends Caro Outhwaite, Jessyca Smoky, and Allison Nichole.
This will most likely be the final book I release from this side of the razor wire. If you have been riding over the years and I have not acknowledged you by name in any of the novels, hit me up on Substack and let me know what books youโve read and how you discovered them. Maybe Iโll give you a shout-out in Scar Tissue.
I love this little collection of letters and symbols. Itโs been a part of my life for almost 6 years now. Eventually, Iโm sure itโll surface on some untatted expanse of my skin. Itโs that special to me. I would do another book giveaway for anyone who can figure out what it signifies, but no one would be able to solve it. I doubt that even a trained CIA agent could crack the code . . .
In fact, if you downloaded Year of the Firefly or The Weight of Entanglement during this monthโs eBook giveaway, you might have noticed this little dyslexic equation on the very bottom of the back side of the โPreviewโ page. Itโs near the end. But if you missed it, youโre not alone. It took me over a month to spot it. And itโs my book.
It all started around New Yearโs of 2019 when a redhead wandered into my orbit. Like most good things in my life, it was the novels that drew her in. She read Sticks & Stones and decided to reach out. Somewhere over the thousands of emails that were exchanged over the ensuing year and a half, we became extremely close. About as close as two people on opposite sides of the razor wire can be. (For a more detailed account of this, check out โShonda Kerry,โ an excerpt from Letters to the Universe, currently up on my Substack page.)
In addition to being beautiful, kind, and the best friend Iโve ever had, Shonda is smart, deliberate, thorough . . . So much so that when the files to my first novel, Consider the Dragonfly, became corrupted and the book appeared to be unsalvageable, she went in and saved it, learning the delicate art of interior formatting in the process. She has since expanded her skill set to include editing, cover design, and the intricacies of the independent publishing industry as well. My girl. โค For close to a decade, I longed for someone to care about these books as much as I do. I think Shonda actually cares more than I do. If that is possible. In the same way I agonize over just the right word, she can spend days deliberating over just the right typeset. Iโm not sure how this level of care translates to eBooks because Iโve never actually seen an eBook, but I know that the physical books are beautiful. If you ever have the opportunity to hold one, see if you disagree . . .
But back to this little sign (>ij=) and the story behind it. Around the time Shonda was sorting out Consider the Dragonfly, she began referring to the book as =j= in her emails when notifying me of her progress. Kinda looks like a dragonfly, doesnโt it? Although my first four novels were already floating around the prison systemโand there had even been a newspaper article about me in my hometown paperโwe still tried to keep our messages about the books relatively cryptic. As long as the administration didnโt specifically say I had to stop writing, I could continue mailing my handwritten manuscripts home. While it was clear that I was a big fan of the dragonfly, Shonda was more of a firefly girl. (Apparently, calling them โlightning bugsโ is a Southern thing.) At one point she was even considering getting a tattoo of the bioluminescent insect. I know this because she sent me a two-page overview of its legend and history. Iโm not sure when the first cyberglyphic firefly appeared in the back and forth of our emails, but it looked sort of like this: >i< Or maybe this: >!< Canโt remember. All I know is that somewhere around the end of that first year, I started ending messages typing โ=j= loves >i< 48โ. Which, over time, she converted to a single symbol: >ij= The merging of the two into one, dragonfly and firefly in mid-flight.
Although Shonda has very little in common with the character Miranda McGuireโaside from hair color and intelligenceโI named the book โYear of the Fireflyโ as acknowledgement of her arrival on the timeline of my own life. Like every other book that Iโve written since, she has been deeply involved in the post-production process. When I finally received an authorโs copy in late 2020, I donโt know who was more excited, me or her. I was blown away by the crispness of the font, the Astral Pipeline imprint logo on the spine, the way Miranda Rights slanted across the bottom in dark ink, how professional the โPreviewโ page looked . . . I kept catching myself holding it like a proud father, thumbing through the pages lovingly. Remember, Iโve been in here for most of my life. And Iโll never have kids of my own. My books are my kids. My legacy. A thousand years from now theyโll still be around. Proof that I once lived and wrote here on Planet Earth. It was during one of these times, a good month after I received the book, that I stumbled upon something hidden at the end. On the back side of the โPreviewโ page was a little collection of symbols: >ij=
She never mentioned it. Just stashed it back there to let me find it myself. My Quiet Storm. My Solitary Girl. Shonda.
This series is the most challenging thing Iโve ever written. It took over 5 years, 3 books, and 220,000 words to get down. Iโm happy to be done with it even though I will miss hanging out with the women in the story. Mothers, survivors, badasses, every one of them. But itโs finally time to move on. Not just from the story either. In real life too. Law of Momentumโthe final book in the Miranda Rights trilogyโis the last novel I will write from a prison cell. Number 8 overall. My lifeโs work. Iโm very proud of it. It will be available on Election Day. Iโll never forget the years I spent writing it. The different cells I was in and the cellmates I had. Or all the women, free and imprisoned, who contributed to the story. But mostly Iโll remember it as the baby I had with Shonda. A little redhead girl named Miranda, radiant with intelligence and unlimited possibility. Six years after that first letter, we are still going strong. Still committed to this journey, still quantumly entangled, still putting out these books. I figured I was overdue to tell the world about her.
Malcolm Ivey / Author 