Malcolm Ivey / Author

Shonda Kerry

Excerpt from “Letters to the Universe”

Who is Shonda? you may be wondering.

I realize I’ve been jumping around a bit, but in the linear arc of this journey—this writing journey, this prison journey, this life journey—the emergence of Shonda represents the lightning crash moment where nothing after would ever be the same.

When she arrived on the scene in late 2018 in the form of a Christmas card, my self-confidence was eroding. Despite a sporadic trickle of correspondence from incarcerated readers, my books remained unknown in the free world. The 120,000-word, meticulously edited and formatted file that was Consider the Dragonfly had fallen into a state of disrepair after the company formerly known as CreateSpace folded into Kindle Direct Publishing. A minor revision attempt sent the novel spiraling into chaos, leaving it with a slender inch of condensed text and fat, five-inch margins—a scrambled mess that even the talented Kelly Conrad could not unravel. My second book, With Arms Unbound, was languishing unread on the department’s aforementioned banned reading list. Again, a frustrating situation since much of my fanbase is behind bars. After an initial bump, Sticks & Stones had settled into an Amazon Best Sellers ranking in the high millions, just south of abysmal. It was becoming obvious that my nephew Jude’s first big royalty check would barely amount to the price of a few stuffed animals. And to top it all off, my greatest triumph, my magnum opus, On the Shoulders of Giants, had recently lost the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards . . . to a cookbook. (A cookbook!) It didn’t even merit an honorable mention. I sound whiny, I know. But it was Christmas and I was homesick. Moreover, I wasn’t writing, which always amplifies the critical voice in my head. I’m generally a glass-half-full kinda guy. And anyone who’s done time with me knows that I’m committed to the long view when it comes to my novels. For years, I had taken solace in NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan’s words: “Great books eventually find their audience.” But in December of 2018, I was beginning to wonder if mine were all that great.

Enter Shonda, a self-described nerdy girl and work-at-home mom who read Sticks & Stones and a handful of the essays in this book around that same time and felt compelled to write. The second oldest of seven children born to a social worker turned teacher and a Detroit autoworker with the soul of a poet; Shonda is one of the most intelligent, most intuitive people I’ve ever known. This was evident from the jump, but it was strikingly clear a couple months later when we began reading self-improvement books together—the genesis of what would later become the Astral Pipeline Book Club. Her chapter-by-chapter analysis read like scholarly commentary: sharp, insightful, and with an economy of words. Her ability to absorb, retain, and distill information bordered on preternatural. Even though she had never published a single essay, she quickly became one of my favorite writers. As hundreds of emails flowed between us, ping-ponging 2,000 miles back and forth across the continent, all the drift and inertia of 2018 began to evaporate. I was inspired by this peculiar and pragmatic woman, my polar opposite in many ways—reserved where I am impulsive, guarded where I can be unrestrained, disciplined where I tend to be disorderly. I’d never met anyone like her; a level 47 dungeon master in the lost art of listening, the still water to my babbling brook. And she believed in me(!) In my stories, in my message, in my mission. I would have never crossed paths with a woman like Shonda in my former life, unless she happened to be filling the tank of her minivan at a gas station I was robbing. In some ways I feel like I wrote her into my orbit, like her presence alone is a spoil of war . . . The War of Art.[1] But this was no time for celebration, no time for a victory lap. I had a novel to write. And my release date was rapidly approaching. It was time to get to work. I had already settled on the bones of the story, one that focused on the female prison experience. But suddenly, details were locking into place. The pages of my journal began to fill with scene ideas and snippets of dialogue. Shadows and silhouettes of characters pulled into focus. I could finally visualize Year of the Firefly’s heroine. No surprise she was a highly intelligent redhead. Art may not always imitate life, but life always informs art. This has been my experience at least.

That being said, Miranda McGuire is no carbon copy of Shonda. Intellect and hair color are where the similarities end. Shonda is far from a liberal activist, her father was not a bipolar and compulsive gambler, she did not have a baby in the Escambia County jail, and although she’s been to prison multiple times, this was only to visit me. She also does not use drugs. Thank God. It was her clean and focused mind that was able to reverse-engineer the colossal snarl that was Consider the Dragonfly and restore it to sanity, learning the subtleties of interior formatting in the process. Then she turned her attention to the other areas of the publishing world—cover design, copyrighting, marketing, ebooks. Her knowledge quickly surpassed mine. All I really know how to do is what I’m doing right now: sit cross-legged on this bunk with a pen in my hand and pad in my lap, the rainforest pumping though my earbuds on repeat, while I wrestle these words onto the page. The craft. This is where I’ve invested my time and energy over the years. And it has been a sound investment across the board; it changed my life, saved my life, altered the course of my destiny. But ever since this journey began, I had been waiting for someone out there to come along, someone who believed in the books, someone who shared my vision, someone to build with, someone who cares as much as I do . . .

Flip to the front of this book. Isn’t it captivating? That mountain-peak mailbox, the starlit sky, the river of city lights glowing in the distance. Beautiful, right? As a rule, it’s bad form to refer to one’s own book cover as “captivating” and “beautiful.” But I didn’t design it. This is Shonda’s handiwork. The authenticity stamp certifying that these words were written by a human and not generated by artificial intelligence? Conceived and designed by Shonda. This crisp and elegant typeface? Pure Shonda. The editing, the formatting, the part breaks. Shonda. The fact that for the first time in twelve years, a Malcolm Ivey book will be available in hardcover? I’ll give you three guesses.

In July of 2020, we founded Astral Pipeline Books. Never again would there be a blank space on the spines of my novels where the publishing company’s imprint belongs—the telltale mark of an amateur. Thanks to Shonda, I graduated from self-publisher to indie publisher. Big moment. Three years later, I still catch myself gazing at the logo; those spinning photons, that quasar. Tempus fugit, amor manet. Damn right. In the coming years, I envision a literary home for talented authors who might have otherwise given up on their dreams. And a book club with a registry of thousands. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. But if none of this happens, if I remain the only writer under the AP umbrella and we keep churning out these obscure prison novels every couple years for the duration, if the Astral Pipeline Book Club never expands beyond its two original members . . . I will still consider it a massive success. How could I not? Remember, in March of 2005—two months after George W. Bush was sworn in as President—a skeletal, crack-addicted, lost young man covered in blood-soaked bandages from police K-9 bites was staggering around central booking and detention, looking for a place to hang himself. The fact that I made it from there to here is a miracle. The fact that you’re holding this book in your hands is a miracle. Like Izzy says in the prologue of On the Shoulders of Giants, “Writing has given me an identity other than failure, loser, career criminal.” I couldn’t agree more.

Sidenote about Giants: Writer’s Digest magazine allows authors five years from the publication date of a given novel to enter it in their annual Self-Published Book Awards. You can enter as many times as you want within that window, but I never bothered to resubmit after being snubbed in 2017. I poured my soul into that novel. If those tight-assed judges couldn’t see the beauty and wonder in it, fuck ’em. The people I wrote it for—the forgotten, the lost, the state raised—all seemed to love it. They passed it around cellblocks and open-bay dormitories like it was the latest David Baldacci novel. This was all the confirmation I needed. But in 2020, Shonda talked me into entering it once more, just before the deadline . . . and it won. First place, mainstream/literary fiction category. Paid a thousand bucks.[2]

But books and business aside, Shonda is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Honest, kind, unwavering. I’ve never had a better friend. A lifetime ago, I remember lying on a slab of concrete at a Central Florida prison called Sumter Correctional, contemplating the busy night sky. At a time when other kids my age were thinking about prom and graduation, I was just beginning a nine-year bid in the Department of Corrections. Nine years seems like nothing now. A wisp of smoke. I’ve served twice that long on this current sentence alone. But at that age, nine years felt like an eternity. Dad had just died, old friends were fading, my girlfriend was long gone. Life as I knew it was changing. I remember looking up at the stars that night, lonesome as hell, imagining that somewhere beneath the same sky, a girl was getting ready to go out—brushing her hair, applying makeup, trying on outfits in front of a mirror; unaware that her life was on a collision course with mine. It took decades for our paths to align, but when she finally showed up, I knew exactly who she was: a lost prayer. A letter to the Universe, answered. My solitary girl. My quiet storm. Shonda.

1. If you’re a writer (or musician or a painter or a sculptor or a human being living on Planet Earth) and you have not read Steven Pressfield’s masterful book on battling resistance, do yourself a favor: buy it now. Your unlived life awaits.
2. I hereby withdraw my previous statement about tight-assed judges. Especially since I plan on entering this book in 2024.

Firefly Giveaway

This is my fifth novel. Year of the Firefly. I began writing it in 2019 and finished it in 2020. Unlike the four books that preceded it, I haven’t talked about this one much. Mainly because it was written during one of the more turbulent and volatile stretches in our nation’s history and chronicles the era from the point of view of a young liberal college student who manages to land herself in jail.

But despite Miranda McGuire’s political views, this is not a political story. Year of the Firefly is the story of a highly intelligent opioid addict attempting to navigate the criminal justice system while simultaneously grappling with all the issues that many young women have to deal with.

Why am I qualified to tell this story? I’m not. That’s why I view it as a miracle. It’s one thing to accurately depict the male prisoner experience, a subject I have known intimately since I was a 13-year-old in juvenile hall, but what do I know about synchronized menstruation? What do I know about colostrum and oxytocin and postpartum depression? What do I know about sexual pressure from staff? Absolutely nothing.

But in 2018, I kept receiving these messages from newly released women who had read Dragonfly or Giants on lockdown, thanking me for shining a light and saying things like “you wrote my life…”

Whoa.

So this is how the Miranda Rights series was born. And after five years, I’m a couple weeks away from releasing the final installment of the trilogy. Law of Momentum. Probably the last book I will write as a prisoner. In the meantime, Book One, Year of the Firefly, will be available as a free download in eBook format on Amazon for the first five days of October. Write me a review if you feel compelled 🙂

For those of you who have been reading my novels for the last decade and change, I appreciate you more than words. ❤ See you on the other side. Momentum.

Ivan the Equalizer

This week marks 20 years since Ivan’s historic arrival in Pensacola, Florida. Like other places or events from my hometown, Ivan played a part in one of my novels . . . Excerpt from “Part Six: 2004–2007, The Other America” in On the Shoulders of Giants, written 2014-2016:

Chapter XIX:  Ivan the Equalizer

The sailboat stern protruded from the roof of the mansion like a knife in a skull, buried to the hilt. One street over, a couch was lodged in a tree. Waterlogged flat screens and stereos lay stacked on the curb next to a wind-mangled yield sign. Overturned cars, shattered windows, lawns strewn with debris. Some houses were no longer houses at all, just wooden bones and empty carcasses stripped bare from the storm surge.

Pharaoh surveyed the destruction from the apex of the roof; chunks of terra cotta fractured beneath his boots, sending red shards of clay sliding toward the drainpipe.

“Fucked up, right Ese?”

He turned and saw a shirtless man in a tool belt with a giant “13” tattooed on his stomach. He didn’t recognize him from the labor pool, but that was no surprise. The storm had brought crews from all over the country. He’d seen license plates on work trucks from as far west as New Mexico and as far north as New York.

“What’s fucked up?”

The man waved his hammer at the rows of flood-ravaged mansions. “All the damage, Ese.”

Pharaoh kicked at a loose piece of tile. “Not really. Rich white folks get their houses tore up and people like us get paid to come fix ’em. Maybe that’s just God’s way of evening things out.”

“Whatchu mean people like us, Ese? I’m Mexican. We get welcomed like heroes when a hurricane hits. But once the work is done and these neighborhoods are rebuilt, they start asking for green cards and locking us up. Pinche gueros.” He turned his hard hat backwards and spat over the side of the roof. “You know where to get any good dope around here, Ese?”

Pharaoh ignored the question. Of course he knew. He knew every dope spot in Pensacola from the avenues to the village to the Azalea Arms dumpster where he and Wino used to hustle. But that part of him was dead and gone.

A dump truck pulled into the cul-de-sac and bounced down the road, weaving its way through the debris until it reached the front lawn where it rumbled over the curb and parked in the grass.

“Chinga!” said the man. “Here comes the jefe.”

Pharaoh watched him disappear over the side of the roof; the aluminum clank of his boots on the ladder quickly melted into the surrounding sounds of hammers, drills, and saws. He glanced back at the bay and noticed his own jefe talking with the homeowner near what was left of a boat dock. The man known throughout the day labor community as Boss caught his eye and motioned him down with a wave.

A sinking feeling overtook him as he made his way to the edge of the roof. He had never been much of a conversationalist but white people made him especially nervous. Something in their vibe. When he stepped onto the ladder, he realized his palms were sweating.

Tighten up, Whoa. What are you trembling for, Homie? You ain’t do shit.

It wasn’t that he was scared. He just needed the work. There weren’t many employment opportunities for a black man with a sixth-grade education and a colostomy bag. McDonald’s wouldn’t even hire him. It would’ve been so easy to get back in the game. One phone call to Dusa. But there was no way he could ever sling dope again. Not after what happened to Symphony.

The ground floor of the house was flood-gutted. Soggy, overturned furniture lay scattered about the enormous living room in haphazard puddles of rainwater. He stepped on the armrest of a splintered Adirondack chair and leapt to a wobbly three-legged billiard table, then over to a tipped barbecue grill, picking his way through the wreckage of the back deck. Strange shapes moved beneath the murky pool water. He kept his distance. There was no telling what had washed in with the storm surge.

Boss and the homeowner monitored his approach with crossed arms and grim faces. He could see them talking from the sides of their mouths. Their suspicion was palpable, even from fifty paces away. Shattered glass from the bay window crunched beneath his work boots as he walked down the steps to the back lawn.

Boss’s Confederate flag belt buckle glimmered in the sun. It reminded Pharaoh of the men who hurled rocks at him and Symphony on the railroad tracks all those years ago.

“You work for me, boy?”

Pharaoh nodded; his colostomy bag was already slick with sweat. He could feel it slipping against his abdomen.

“Thought so,” said Boss. “You were out here yesterday too, weren’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

The homeowner put his hands on his hips and glared down his long thin nose. “And did you go foraging through my house, per chance?”

Pharaoh wasn’t sure what foraging meant, but judging by the man’s snooty tone, he figured it was an accusation. He shook his head.

“So you haven’t been in the master bedroom?” the man pressed. He wore khaki shorts, deck shoes, and a pink Izod. If Pharaoh hadn’t seen a framed picture of him making out with some Asian lady on a yacht, he would have sworn the homeowner was a sissy.

“No sir.” This was a lie, of course. He had explored the entire mansion the day before while his crew was on lunch break. The picture had been in the master bedroom, encased in cracked glass and face down against the baseboard. But he saw no reason to volunteer this information. It wasn’t like he stole anything. He was just curious. He’d never been in a rich white person’s house before.

The homeowner looked over at Boss who shrugged and mopped the deeply etched lines of his forehead with a bandana. “Might not of been him. Could of just as easily been one of the wetbacks on the other crew. Can’t rightly say. Your insurance should cover it, though. Just say it washed away in the flood.”

“These are family heirlooms, you idiot,” snapped the homeowner. “Priceless. The jewelry box alone is irreplaceable.”

Jewelry box? Pharaoh’s paranoia devolved into full-blown panic. He’d been in this situation before. The only black man on a job site where something comes up missing. It usually resulted in his swift termination.

“Now just calm down, Mr. Chestnut,” said Boss. “Name calling ain’t gonna help the situation none.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! It’s not your home that’s destroyed. It’s not your valuables that are missing. Everything you ever worked for isn’t…” He paused and frowned at Pharaoh’s waistline. “Hey, what do you have under your shirt?”

Pharaoh took a step back.

“He’s hiding something!”

Boss squinted at his midsection. “What you got there, boy?”

The colostomy bag was a source of deep shame for Pharaoh for many reasons. It stank, it was a sign of weakness, the stoma which he affixed the bag to often bled and was hideous to look at, but most of all, it was a constant reminder of Symphony’s murder. It had been nine years since he removed his shirt in public or wore anything other than baggy clothes. He hadn’t even been with a woman since he was shot.

“I knew it!” the homeowner lunged for him.

Pharaoh sidestepped his stumbling advance and slapped him hard on the ear, sending him rolling across the grass to the water’s edge. The blow was both reflexive and defensive. He regretted it instantly. It sounded like a gunshot; his hand throbbed afterwards. The man staggered drunkenly to his feet, then fell again. Blood trickled from his ear onto the pink collar of his Izod.

Boss fumbled for his buck knife and flipped it open. “Now let’s not make this any worse than it already is.”

Pharaoh turned and bolted for the side of the house, the colostomy bag flopping wildly against his hip.

“Thief!” screamed the homeowner. “Help! Stop him!”

He darted across the street, leaped over a downed tree, slid across the hood of a dented Lexus, then sprinted through the remains of someone’s living room, out the back door, over tennis courts and flattened privacy fences, past screaming saws and banging hammers, under scaffold, between conversations, around uprooted mini-mansion dog houses and paisley shaped swimming pools. He ran until his lungs screamed and his heart felt like it was going to burst. When his side began to cramp and his run became a limping trot, he looked around and spotted a chrome Hutch Trick Star in a pile of rubble. He’d seen white boys ride them to elementary school. Upon separating it from the debris, he was surprised to see the chain still in place and the tires full of air. Quickly, he straightened out the handlebars and pedaled off.

None of the street names were familiar. He made random rights and lefts down courts, lanes and drives, frantic to disentangle himself from the upscale waterfront neighborhood, yet only ensnaring himself further with every wishful turn. The bicycle made him appear even more suspicious. Occasionally a Benz or a Jag would roll by and every head would turn. Sweat poured down his face, burning his eyes. He jumped the curb from sidewalk to street, coasted down a dip, then pedaled hard up a hill. When he reached the top, he was rewarded with the promise of an urban oasis: a traffic light and a major thoroughfare. The way out.

He stood on the pedals and rocked side to side, building momentum as he raced toward freedom. The roar of an engine swelled from behind him. He didn’t look back.

Suddenly a car screeched in front of him. He smacked it broadside and flipped over the hood, separating from the bicycle in midair and somersaulting to the asphalt where he slid to a stop. He tried to climb to his knees in the ensuing shock and confusion, but the car door immediately swung open and cracked him in the face, knocking him back to the ground. The explosion of pain was blinding neon white, short-circuiting optic nerve from brain. When his vision returned, he found himself staring up into the mirrored sunglasses of a cop.

Massive hairy knuckles reached down inside his collar, snatched him off the ground and flung him against the hood of the patrol car.

“Good morning, Scumbag. What brings you over to this side of town? A little post-hurricane looting perhaps?”

Pharaoh croaked a denial.

“No? Huh. That’s funny. Maybe the call I got was about some other crazy nigger running around attacking people and stealing their shit. You seen any around here?”

He didn’t bother attempting another answer. He just stared longingly at the traffic light two blocks away. Almost…

“That’s what I thought. You got anything on you I should know about? Knives guns drugs stems needles … jewelry?” He performed an intensive pat search beginning with Pharaoh’s shoulders. “You look familiar, big guy. Have I ever arrested you before?”

Pain crept where adrenaline faded. When he swallowed, he tasted blood.

“Not much of a talker, are you? Guess I don’t need to read you your Miranda…” He paused when he felt the colostomy bag. “Well, well. What do we have here?”

There was a smugness in the cop’s voice as he reached beneath his shirt. For the first time since the shooting, Pharaoh wished the bag would burst.

“Aw what the fuck!”

He was quickly cuffed and shoved in the back of the car.

“What am I being arrested for?”

“Oh so you can talk. You could’ve warned me about that shit bag, you know.”

Pharaoh stared out the window as the cop slid behind the wheel.

“Aggravated assault and two counts of grand theft.”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“No?” said the cop through the scratched Plexiglas. “Then where’d you get that bike?”