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Strength From Failure
Broken Pencils follows a turbulent teenager from Oakland who, on his eighteenth birthday, spirals into a night of reckless indulgence, searching for purpose and meaning in life. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
BROKEN PENCILS is a semi-biographical story loosely based on actual events and people from my teenage years. When the time came to structure the story, I drew inspiration from J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye as my guide toward creating an engaging narrative about a Black teen’s struggle with mental health. My hope is that the story will resonate with anyone who is dealing with the same issues. In regards to the authenticity of the story, let’s just say the inspiration came from a crazy night at my Senior prom, some of which are still difficult to recall.
I found Jonah to be an extremely well-written and in-depth character. What was your inspiration for his emotional turmoil throughout the story?
The emotional turmoil throughout the story was based on my own struggles with mental health. Ever since I was a kid, I dealt with bouts of depression and manic episodes. Despite my successes with therapy and medication, I have always carried this shame from not being understood and guilt from feeling misunderstood. Through Jonah’s heroic and chaotic journey, I wanted to take the reader along this emotional rollercoaster so that they may gain insight into the challenges and beauty of having Bipolar Disorder.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The book explores several important themes that I found resonated throughout my life including coping with grief, managing mental health, complexities of identity, dealing with existential crisis, succumbing to peer pressure. The most important theme in the book was the idea how feeling broken can inspire us to become better, which became clear in my life when I lost my best friend, Dion, at a young age. With his passing, I also lost my innocence to the world. My eyes began to see the suffering and fragility in so many lives. Yet within these broken lives, I saw strength from failure and beauty of growth, both of which I strived for myself and personified through Jonah’s character.
What were some goals you set for yourself as a writer in this book?
BROKEN PENCILS deserves to be read and studied by anyone who has ever felt broken. In spite of the chaos and drama, the story is full of rich meaning and raw emotion meant to inspire readers to examine their own purpose in life. My goal is for the book to reach a national audience and span to international countries as well as college courses and book clubs. My dream is having the book adapted to film or TV series, but I know I’ll be too old to play Jonah. Upon the book’s release, readers will be able to purchase exclusive merchandise based on the book, including original sketch artwork and T-Shirts. There is already a sequel to BROKEN PENCILS in the works, so stay tuned. Visit www.jrrice.com for more updates.
Author Links: Website | Instagram
Jonah Tarver, a troubled Oakland teenager grappling with his parents’ troubled marriage, his own mental disorder, and the weight of his best friend’s death, embarks on a desperate quest to find meaning in life. Will he find the purpose he yearns for, or will he discover that life has no point like broken pencils?
BROKEN PENCILS
Broken Pencils by J.R. Rice delves into the turbulent life of Jonah Tarver, a teenager from Oakland facing the challenges of adolescence, family strife, and personal mental struggles. The story unfolds over a significant day in Jonah’s life, marked by key events: prom night, the eve of his birthday, and the anniversary of his best friend’s death. This convergence of milestones catapults him into a whirlwind of chaos and uncertainty.
The narrative paints a vivid picture of Jonah’s environment, where the constant arguments of his parents form a continuous, unsettling backdrop. Jonah strives to protect his younger brother from their family’s deteriorating dynamics. Compounding his distress is the strained relationship with his father and the perceived betrayal by his friend Trevon and girlfriend Taniesha. Prom night becomes a pivotal point as Jonah plunges into a world of drugs, alcohol, and reckless behavior, leading to unforeseen consequences and revelations, including a discovery about his father. J.R. Rice’s Broken Pencils is more than a story of a teenager’s life; it’s a reflection of how things from the past can unfold in a single day. This book is a poignant exploration of choice and consequence, distinguished by Rice’s skill in creating authentic, complex characters. These characters, each entangled in their own struggles, bring a rich, multifaceted perspective to the narrative. At its core, the novel grapples with the theme of brokenness, portraying it not as a defect to be mended but as an intrinsic part of the human experience. While it subtly addresses the experience of young black individuals, the book does not make race its focal point. Instead, an undercurrent of mental health issues weaves through the narrative, offering a layer for readers to uncover and interpret.
Rice offers an emotionally resonant, thoughtful, and philosophically charged narrative in Broken Pencils. It serves as a compelling reminder of the weight of our choices and their indelible impact on our lives and those around us.
Outcast – Book Trailer
Tirrell Ellis has always felt like an outcast. His loving grandmother takes him in after the death of his parents and his very existence becomes the source of much conflict between him and his half-brother.
Feelings of being unwanted fester inside Tirrell and he eventually explodes in fits of anger. His unbridled temper gets him booted out of the military, and he violently unleashes his frustration on his girlfriend when he discovers a secret that she’s been harboring.
Tirrell believes things are finally turning around in his favor when he meets Alexandra Solomon. Blinded by the trappings of the lifestyle she offers him, he ignores the warnings of his grandmother to stay away from her.
By the time Tirrell finds out that Alex Solomon is not who she appears to be, it’s almost too late, as he puts his life and the lives of his family in danger.
With his world falling to ruin, will Tirrell be able to right the wrongs he’s done and prove that he’s not he pariah his family believes him to be?
The Testimony of a Villain
![Testimony of a Villain: A Raw, Dark, True Crime Thriller by [Harrell, Aaron G.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51-LhhCIDOL.jpg)
The Testimony of a Villain by Aaron Harrell is a dark, slick ride into the gritty alleys of the inner city. The book is not your typical crime thriller but one with a social lens that can only be given substance by one who has lived it. The reader follows Manuel Doggett, a boy who lost everything to be formed by the streets and remade in its’ dark image. He is out for retribution not redemption when an opportunity arises to have his vengeance on one of the murderers of his family.
Harrell provides a fresh and new take to the “true crime” thriller. His style is so firmly set in the bitingly grime reality of the inner city that the reader could even give this novel a new sub-genre of socio-economic thriller. The new threads do not stop there either, because the plot of the book itself is almost like a hero’s journey in reverse. Manuel is the classic anti-hero and one that does not once look to the audience for sympathy. Instead, there is only apathy towards almost everything, except towards the memories of his past.
The weaving of the inner city struggle and the complex inner life of Manuel makes this novel a stand out for readers of not only crime thrillers, but also those who wish to delve into the dark, broken mind of a man walking the line between light and shadow. The writing is fraught with graphic images of both violence and sex and is not for the weak-hearted.
I found myself enjoying the book from the start, because of the quick and realistic dialogue and the meta conversation about corruption, justice and social strata. There are a lot of binaries at play here, between the poor and wealthy, justice and injustice, and morality and immorality. Harrell does a fantastic job with surveying these issues, touching on them just enough without becoming too explicit. I can only guess at what Harrell’s personal experience has been with the inner city, but I very much appreciated the taste of authenticity that he lends to the narrative.
I find Manuel to be a compelling character. Most readers may find something akin to the backstory of Batman here, but there is a real human struggle that Harrell puts on display often.
Overall, I do believe that The Testimony of a Villain stands up to the best the crime thriller genre has to offer. It makes for a pleasurable read for any fans of such novels!
Pages; 489 | ASIN: B06XG6FYVH
LITERARY TITAN 