In Life and How to Live It: Near Wild Heaven, you share with readers the trauma, confusion, and the beliefs that shaped you. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I started writing my memoir series in 2019, after witnessing my only sibling pass away at the age of 45. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that took her within four months she was diagnosed.

I got to the hospice she was in, which was an 8-hour drive away, just in time to see her take her last gagging breath. It was something that shocked me to my core.

I decided soon after that I had to do something with my life. This death was just another tragedy that my life was full of.

I started writing my memoir shortly after about my childhood growing up in poverty in Philadelphia. I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a rundown, lower-class neighborhood called Kensington. My father was a long-time heroin addict, and my mother was a devout evangelical born-again Christian. This was how I entered the world and the hand I was dealt.

The first book chronicles how I entered such rotten conditions and what I found along the way to keep me going. Mainly friends I made, and especially the popular music of the times. R.E.M. was a huge influence on me. So much so that the book series’ title and subtitles are from songs from the band.

The first one ends with me in an emotional predicament that leaves me feeling numb from the trauma I experienced so far by the age of 17.

This installment picks up right after and shows a kid full of confusion and no options in life, trying to pick up the pieces of his life and find his way.

The first book is more of a launching pad for my story. This one is the real beginning of how I lived and tried to find meaning in it all.

It’s the beginning of my sort of wild years. Hence why I call it Near Wild Heaven. I show how I lived my teen years without many filters or boundaries on. I show how I live in the moment as much as I can and try to figure out this life we are all in. Along the way, I tell stories of the girls I fell for, run-ins with local cops, meeting people who were out to make me feel bad about being myself, mental health problems that plagued me, and running down dreams that were never coming to me.

It was important for me to get these out to show I didn’t just live in vain. I experienced these moments, and I think they’re worth telling.

I appreciated the honesty with which you tell your story. What was the most difficult thing for you to write about?

When I started writing this series, I knew I just wanted to tell it like it was. I wanted to be honest about everything. The problem there was that I had to relive some painful memories. I remembered everything that happened to me back, but putting it to paper and explaining how things happened and how they made me feel was a bit difficult to do. The worst part was the telling of meeting people who questioned my faith in humanity. I met people who were so cruel and ugly to me at such a young age that it left me feeling insecure and constantly conflicted about how I saw my fellow man. People who were just out to manipulate and kill my positive energy did a number on my mental state and my views on society in general for a bit back then. I couldn’t grasp why some people would just be downright ugly to people who did nothing to them. Then I realized some people don’t have the courage to be decent human beings.

Did you learn anything about yourself as you were putting this book together?

Writing this book was at first a bit difficult. I was writing these during the Covid lockdown. So all I did then was work (I was an essential worker) and write. There wasn’t much entertainment or distractions going on then. So reliving some of this put me in a dark place for a while. When I got out of the time periods I found most troubling to write about, and started to get the editing done, I felt a sense of accomplishment or a reminder of who I was then and how I hope that self is still alive in me now. This book is set when I was 17/18 and I was full of ambition and passion for life. 30 years later, it’s harder to have such fire in life. No matter how one is raised, 30 years of life takes a toll on you. Writing this one and what is going to be the next one (that’s being edited now and is the same time frame) was a reminder of who I am to the core and how I can’t ever forget that.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering sharing their own memoir with readers?

My advice is to be honest and try to write from your experiences, but also think of how others might read or see it. Try to explain how things happened, but make sure it’s universal as much as so the reader can relate and understand the situations.

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