A Small World

In Waterbury, Connecticut, twenty seven year old Claude Porter is released after serving a ten year prison sentence. He steps back into society with the intention of living a legal life, despite Jerome "Rocks" Watt's attempts to lure him back into his former criminal lifestyle. After becoming gainfully employed, Claude gets fired for falsifying his information on the job application. Growing tired of penning applications in a gridlocked system not designed for ex-convicts, he embarks on a mission, alongside Rocks, to capture the American Dream by any means necessary. In Los Angeles, California, Aaron Banks, a thirty three year old career criminal with a horrific past, strategizes a mass murder to take over the revenue in the streets. With the assistance of his cousin Flex and a few others, the men pull off the hit and came away with a stack of kilos and forty grand. When they catch wind that there may be a potential witness to the mass murder, Aaron and Flex vows to eliminate the witness and anyone who has any knowledge of their horrific crime, including Aaron's suspicion ridden ex-girlfriend Sonya, but he doesn't realize that he, too, along with his people, are being hunted. This is a gritty, unpolished, urban fiction novel that is set in multiple cities. A story of murder, violence, deceit, lust, sex, and betrayal, this fable is based on the dark lives of individuals who rely on animal instinct to get that fast cash.

About the Author :
Derek was inspired by another poet to write. Derek took his friend's advice and made good use with it. He began writing poetry vigorously. He began to publish his work in the school newspaper at Western Connecticut State University where many students and college professors took notice. By the end of his second year in Western, he, along with his poet friends, began to recite their work to an audience. When Derek took an acting class as an elective in his third year at Western, he was assigned to write a short story surrounding the senseless shooting of an African American youth. When the professor expressed his strong interest on his project, Derek began to read novels in all genres. Even though a friend from high school helped spark his reading interest, his classes and work schedule conflicted with any leisure time he had available. When he graduated from Western, he developed an addiction to reading novels, but wrote his poetry sparingly. Years later, throughout all the short story and novel writing attempts, Derek lost his desire to write fiction and poetry because of the complexities that came with writing and the general intricacies in his life. After a lengthy writing hiatus, he wrote a poem titled "Runnin" that outlined a glimpse of his problems, but transferred those shortcomings onto a fugitive, the protagonist of the poem. Although Derek's issues weren't law breaking, he made them to be for the life of the protagonist. His desire to write peaked, deciding that the name of the book would be titled "Runnin." After writing a few chapters, he was noticing a lot of recidivism among the environment he grew up in, especially among his friends. He witnessed their struggle to find suitable employment in an unforgiving society, but watched them get caught deeper into the prison system for simply trying to make ends meet. He decided to change the protagonist from a fugitive to an ex-convict suffering the aftermath of being released from prison. Since he started writing about a fugitive, he started his story over, developing ex-convict Claude Porter and his bold attempt at living a legal life armed with a felon.