It’s been a while since I wrote anything here on my blog. I have a good reason. I’ve been busy editing and self-publishing my second book called “Nicetown.” That’s a good excuse, right? Publishing a second book is a great thing to do if you’re a writer, and it feels like a very fulfilling task. I’ve invested in this book for a very long time. The idea came to me about two years ago, and it took all that time until last week to actually publish this motherfucker. Well, it takes what it takes, and now this book will be out there in the world on the digital Amazon bookshelf for as long as Amazon will last. And I think that beast will outlive all of us.

The book I am talking about, “Nicetown,” is a collection of stories and poems, both fictional and autobiographical. These are all the stories I’ve been working on for the last five years. It is a random collection of stories I’ve written at different points in my life, mainly about my life and the shit I was going through at the time. There is a bit of a theme in that book based on my personal experiences, letting go of two jobs, driving for Uber for a living, trying to become a writer, struggling and eventually making it all work, becoming a father, and raising a family. This book covers a lot of topics and subjects. Some of them are series, and some are just random shit that I thought would be worthwhile to include in the book. There are some decent poems in this book as well. I think my poetry has improved over the years, and there is a lot of interesting and deep stuff readers might enjoy and appreciate. My first book, “My Poems, My Soul,” was a collection of early poetry. Mostly very mean and depressing poems written by a young wanna-be poet and writer, trying to write like Bukowski and suffering through everyday life, trying to find a meaning of it all. But these poems sound immature and naive in a way, even pretentious. They are essential in my writing life because this is where it all began. This is where it all happened. This is what I’ve been going through over the years, trying to fit my life into a poem. Poems in my latest book, though, are more mature and serious. I am taking it all to the next level here. I am happy about that material and am glad they got their new life in this book.

So how this book came to be? I’ve been writing and posting my stories and poems on my blog for about two years at the time, and approaching the second anniversary, I wanted to do something special. I thought about collecting and publishing everything I posted on the blog into a new book. The original name was “Writing Blog.” I started editing the material for the book, and I couldn’t get myself to finish it. There was always something in a way. It took too much time and effort. I felt fucking lazy to do it. Life got in the way. A lot of changes in my personal life indeed. So I had a plan, but I wasn’t going to follow it for some time. Eventually, in early 2022, I decided to finally get it done. It took me ten months to finish what I had planned, as usual, with multiple interruptions. Fortunately, I finished editing by late October, and this massive stone was off my chest.

There are a lot of stories based in and about Philadelphia and my life and my fictional character’s life, based in Philadelphia. I thought having this book framed around this town would be a great idea. This is my adopted hometown. I lived here for half of my life. So why the fuck not? The name Nicetown means what it sounds like it means. I decided to call this book a Nicetown sarcastically. There is a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Nicetown, and nothing is nice about it. Philadelphia is known to be a City of Brotherly Love. Based on my experience, it has anything but love. So many stories in the book are about getting lost and finding yourself. It is about making shit work, finding your purpose, finding the right way, getting lost, making a living, surviving, raising a family, struggling, and so on. At the end of the day, all the puzzles came together. The stories, the poems, the book title, and the themes inside the book all make perfect sense. They are part of me. They are part of my life. They are part of who I was and whom I became.

It all began mid-2017 when I was let go of my first job. I was lucky then, and I had a new job right after. That new job didn’t last for too long either, and I was fired for the second time in about four months. Fuck. Where do you go from here? I went to drive for Uber. Something that at one point felt scary and liberating, on the one hand, has become my curse for the next eight months and counting, on the other. I had no luck finding a new place for a while, so Uber became my primary source of income. I thought then this was my opportunity to become a writer and write all the time as much as I wanted. But this was a very short-lived feeling. The more time passed, the less money remained in my bank account, and driving for Uber was the only option to keep afloat. And after driving for fifteen hours a day, I had no fucking energy or creative juice to write anything. It all lasted for about eight months until I found a job at a company and industry which I fucking hated the most, but they needed me, and I needed the money and something to put on my resume, so it all began again. The short series of stories, “My Shit’s Out of Luck,” is all about that. There are also a lot of fiction and other stuff I’ve written over the years that are quite an interesting take on life, writing, life lessons, and searching for yourself. This book is dedicated to those who are lost and searching and to those who have found and keep searching. As this search in life never ends until life ends.

It feels good to have something done. It feels good to have a new book out. It feels good to have your second book published. It feels even better when you’ve done it all yourself. It is all yours; I mean, it is all mine. It is a piece of me and a piece of my life, and I am happy to release that burden out there in the world and take that baggage off my shoulders. Let it go. Let it fly. Let it do what it does. Let it live. The future is here. The future is near. The future is all the unwritten books out there in the world. And I will make this future more interesting, as there is just so much more to say and to write and to think about. Life has just begun.