It’s been some time since I’ve sat here in my study and written anything of value. One thing I’ve learned over the last five years while dealing with the reprecussions of my bicycle accident on June 10th 2013 is that you can die at any moment. I once thought I was indestructable, like most kids. The problem with me is it took thirty-years to realize the way I was living would only lead back to the streets, prison or a graveyard.

In my work in progress… the shocking tell-all biography, DESTINY, I’ve had to face down some pretty ugly facts about my life prior to 2008. Back then I was nothing but a common criminal with four prison sentences under his belt, I was not just heading nowhere fast… I was there. Rock bottom… a 42 year old nothing. I’m not sure what woke me, perhaps it was the last incarceration, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve suffered thorugh. Some of you know, at the age of 8 my mother abandoned me and I grew up on the streets of Times Square and Miami, became addicted to street drugs at a very early age and well… growing up on the streets, one doesn’t learn the right way to live. It’s a mentality of US against THEM… and by them, it’s anyone who didn’t live on the streets, grow up in boys homes, SUFFER THROUGH foster care or have the scent of the streets woven into their very fabric. I regret most of my past decisons throuhout life, the drugs, crime, penetentiary… it was a road that led me to nowhere fast. I could and have laid the blame of my screwy life at my birth-mother’s feet. But the fact remains, at some point we all have to grow a pair of balls and change our circumstances.

I know that better than most. I lived the life, saw the consequences and was almost sent away for LIFE under California’s Three-Strike Law. Now, I’m a case study why three-strikes legislation doesn’t work. People do change and sometimes it’s not on the second, third or tenth attempt. Had a California attorney by the name of Denise Lee not fought for me, I would be a 52-year old man waitng to die at San Quentin State Prison. But she believed in humanity’s ability to change… and she saved my life.

The rest is history, you all know my story, how I broke into the business in 2000 with my bio screenplay, DESTINY, the competitions that led to three agents representing my work. Then, the Emmy swag; the book awards and the breakout Amazon bestselliing novel, The Santa Claus Killer. It all happened so fast it was like a dream.

You’re all going to love the biography, it’s sad, happy and frightful. But it’s all real; it’s all the truth. Reading like a Mario Puzo thriller, something happens in every chapter. Just like life, each day brings new adventures… though I hope yours were better than mine. I’ve long ago made peace with my past, it doesn’t matter anymore, I’ve done the time, learned from my mistakes and moved on with an amazing career as a novelist. Sure, there have been challenges, the biking accident, ten surgeries to fix what was damaged and the spiraling of my writing career because of all the injuries, which prevented me from tours and appearances. I could be an angry, depressed despot. Instead, I choose to live my life, because, as the kids say today, YOLO… You Only Live Once.

One of my favorite authors, William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Faulkner once wrote “the past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”

He also said: “Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” I live my life by this instruction.

How about that? Just wanted to share the above with you all. My history is no secret, I’ve always been open about my faults in interviews and conversations. Here is my message: No matter what you face in life, no matter how hard you work or play, always remember that today will become yesterday and the past is only a reflection of who you were. A lot of people try to use my criminal record against me, my upbringing, both in my personal and professional life, they try to degrade my honor, ridicule my circumstances and skirt their own responsibilities. But it doesn’t bother me, I’m not that person they talk about anymore. I changed on my own clock, when I was ready, when I was sick-and-tired of being sick and tired. So, I say, never hide who you are, where you’ve been or what you went through. It all adds up to the whole of who you are today. For better or worse, you have to live with yourself in the dead of night.