No Filter: From Skateboard Kid to Entrepreneur shares your story about growing up in an abusive home, joining the Army at 19, and after living through combat, trauma, and broken relationships, before turning your pain into purpose. Why was this an important book for you to write?

No Filter was the book I couldn’t keep inside any longer. For decades I carried pain — from an abusive childhood, from what I saw and did in combat, from the way I failed as a husband and father — and it was eating me alive.

This wasn’t just a “next book project.” This was my line in the sand. When I came back from Phoenix, Arizona, after attending a book award event where I felt invisible and out of place, I had an awakening. I realized I could either keep playing nice and hiding behind polite words, or I could tear the mask off and tell the truth, even if it made people uncomfortable.

That’s why No Filter is written the way it is — blunt, messy, unpolished. Thomas Anderson said in his review that it feels “alive and immediate,” like I’m sitting across from the reader, telling it straight. That was intentional. I wanted people to feel like they’re in the room with me, hearing my story unfiltered, hearing the pain in my voice, and watching me fight my way through it.

I didn’t write No Filter to be liked — I wrote it to be heard. Because survival means nothing if you stay silent about what almost killed you.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

This book was built on three core pillars: truth, accountability, and hope.

Truth was the foundation. The world is flooded with filters and fake perfection — I wanted the opposite. That’s why No Filter is unapologetically raw. As Thomas Anderson wrote in his review, the “short bursts of thought, the blunt admissions, the cursing when softer words won’t do” make the story feel alive and immediate. I wanted readers to feel like I was sitting across from them, looking them in the eye, telling them what really happened.

Accountability was the second pillar. I’m not just telling my story as a victim — I’m standing trial in front of every reader. I’ve hurt people I loved, including my daughter, and by letting her write the first entry, I opened this memoir by facing my own guilt and her forgiveness head-on.

And finally, hope is what carries the book through the darkness. The stories are painful, yes, but I wanted readers to see the redemption too. I wanted them to feel that even if they’ve been broken, they can still rebuild.

No Filter was never about telling a pretty story — it was about building a platform readers can stand on when life knocks them down. These three pillars hold that platform up.

What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?

The most challenging part wasn’t the writing — it was tearing open wounds I’d tried to keep buried for decades. No Filter forced me to relive nights I tried to drink myself numb, the deployments that left ghosts in my head, the years I watched my daughter grow up from a distance because I was too broken to be there.

But it was also physically challenging. I live with severe tremors in my left hand, a lasting effect from years of medication prescribed through the VA. I can’t sit at a keyboard and type like most writers. I don’t use AI, and I don’t hire ghostwriters. Every single word of this memoir came from my own raw voice — recorded into my phone, turned into notes, and shaped into this book. That’s why, as Thomas Anderson wrote in his review, it feels “alive and immediate.” It literally is me, speaking directly to the reader.

The most rewarding part was turning that pain into something that could help someone else survive. When a reader tells me my words made them put the gun down, pour out the bottle, or call their kid after years of silence — that’s when I know No Filter has done its job.

I fought my past, my trauma, and even my own body to get these words out — and if they give just one person the strength to stay alive one more day, then every second of that fight was worth it.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?

I want readers to finish No Filter with one truth burning in their chest: you are not alone — but you can’t keep hiding from yourself.

That’s why the cover is black and white. It’s not an accident — it’s a statement. That cover is the darkness I was in. It shows me slouched, looking like the weight of the world is crushing me. Then you turn to the back and see the only color image in the entire book — a hint that there’s light on the other side if you’re willing to walk through the darkness.

When readers turn that last page, I don’t just want them to close the book. I want them to put it down, stand up, walk into their bathroom or bedroom, and stare into their own mirror. I want them to ask themselves: “Have I been living as the real me? Or have I been hiding this whole time?”

Because that’s what No Filter is — a confrontation. It’s not just my story. It’s an invitation for readers to strip away their own filters and face the person staring back at them.

And when they scan the QR code on the back cover, I want them to realize this book is just one piece of a bigger mission — The Mirror, The Broken Mirror, and now No Filter. It’s a trilogy designed to move readers from pain to reflection to action.

If just one reader closes No Filter, looks in the mirror, and says, “I’ve been hiding long enough — it’s time to face my life head-on,” then I’ve done what I came here to do. This book isn’t just a memoir — it’s a mirror, and it dares you to look.