Blog

People ask me all the time how I do it.

How does a firefighter write street fiction? How does a guy who responds to Maydays and hazmat calls sit down and write a children's book? How does someone who runs into burning buildings also write about productivity frameworks and finishing your goals?

The honest answer is that none of those things is as far apart as they look from the outside.

They all come from the same place. A life that has never fit neatly into one box.

I've Always Lived in Multiple...

It started with a three-year-old and a very specific career goal.

My daughter Zoë didn't tell me she wanted to be a firefighter. She told me she wanted to be a fire engine. Not a firefighter. A fire engine. And spray water.

I couldn't argue with that level of commitment.

If you want to see the moment that started it all, go to my Instagram at @iamsevy. I have the video pinned right at the top. It's one of the funniest and most genuine things you'll ever watch. A little girl with a big dream and...

Frank Wright didn't come from my imagination. Well, at least not completely.

He came from my block.

He came from the songs I grew up listening to, the corners I walked past, the faces I recognized before I ever knew what their lives really looked like behind closed doors. Frank is an accumulation of culture, of music, of lived experience that started long before I ever put on a fire helmet or picked up a pen.

Bleed: Shadows of Redemption was inspired by "N****s Bleed" by the Notorious B.I.G.,...

There's always somebody in the firehouse who says they didn't know.

Didn't know the culture. Didn't know what was expected. Didn't know how to carry themselves in the academy, on the rig, or in the station. And for a long time, that was just accepted as part of the process. You figure it out, or you don't.

I wasn't willing to accept that anymore.

Hey, New Guy! didn't come from one single moment. It came from years of watching people walk into the fire service completely blind and then struggle...