Eric Wilson's Blog

The murder occurred in 2004, only minutes from our home on the south end of Nashville. We followed it in the news, riveted by the story of a young female perpetrator caught in a web of drugs, abuse, and sex trafficking.

She was tried a few years later and given a life sentence. I had no idea my own story would eventually tie in with hers--through the prosecutor who denied her appeal.

Last year, I was connected with Preston Shipp, former assistant attorney general for the state of Tennessee. He is a highly competent prosecutor and writer, but he was unable to tackle a full book amidst his current obligations as senior policy adviser for CFSY (Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth).

I stepped in. Spent four days hearing his story and taking notes. Wrote a rough draft.

And he then did the polishing to make the story his own.

This is a story to be read by everyone. Preston's life was turned upside down when the young woman whose appeal he denied became a friend as he taught her in the Tennessee Prison for Women. He realized she was worthy of redemption. She, and many others like her, were candidates for restorative justice instead of the punitive justice our system demands. His career, his faith, and his personal encounters all came into question as he reconsidered his years of locking away faceless perpetrators.

Preston's story is powerful and challenging. I was honored to have a part in his book, Confessions of a Former Prosecutor, available in April 2024.

Preston is no longer a prosecutor. Regardless, he is a man who considers all sides, listens patiently with an open mind, then pounces on flaws in an argument. He pounced on the flaws in his own thinking--thus, the publication of this book--and now advocates fiercely for the lives of those incarcerated as youth. He is pictured above with Eric Alexander, one such man who was freed and now spends his time helping others.

This is a hard-hitting story of redemption for those who are locked behind bars--and for one man who passed the bar exam.

--Eric Wilson

WilsonWriter.com

"What are you going to do?"

In the early 1950s, Everett Swanson responded to this simple question when confronted with the thousands of orphans and refugee children from the Korean War. He partnered with Korean men and women, most of whom faced severe hunger and health issues themselves, to bring hope to the children--and from their efforts, Compassion International was formed.

While I have sponsored Compassion children in Colombia and Guatemala, I had never heard of Everett Swanson. How could this man go completely under the radar?

It was by his own choice. He didn't want to be the man in the spotlight. The children were the ones who mattered, an attitude reflected even in the cover photo of my new book, cowritten with Matt Bronleewe.

Matt and I have worked over four years on this project, collecting stories, getting legal permission, and vetting the book through Compassion USA and Compassion Korea. We wanted to get the story right. It is that important.

It is also a great story. Funny. Touching. Inspiring.

I am still moved to tears as I read through the final chapters. Every time. Without fail.

I can't wait for you to read this book. Until then, when faced with situations which seem hopeless, overwhelming, and beyond your ability, ask yourself those six little words:

What are you going to do?

It's odd to love a place and feel at home there, while never quite feeling accepted. Maybe this is an emotion left over from my childhood overseas, always embracing new cultures while never quite feeling like I belonged.

When I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, 22 years ago, I didn't know I would get my first book published here and go on to write 20 more in this place. I love Music City. I love the creativity, vibrancy, friendliness, and natural beauty. This is home. I've embraced this place with all my heart. And yet, I've had my lowest turnouts here for booksignings and events.

That old childhood rejection rears its head.

Yes, Nashville is a busy place. The Metro area now has over 2 million people, and there are lots of competing options for readers' attentions. A bookstore such as Barnes and Noble in Cool Springs is a good 45 minutes from the other side of town. I get it.

Next Saturday, June 10th, from 2 to 4:30 pm, at the Cool Springs Barnes and Noble, I will be doing my first local booksigning for American Leftovers. I hope 50 of my readers, fans, and friends show up. But I know the reality. I know how this usually goes. And I emotionally brace myself for those old feelings.

In fact, this is something every creative person deals with when writing a new book, penning a new song, painting a new landscape. We face the demons of our past and that inner voice which tells us it is all meaningless, it is no good, it is unwanted. We press on, knowing that creative birth must take place and to hold it back will be debilitating. Often, it feels like we have no choice. This thought, this idea, this image must be born.

The response to American Leftovers has been fantastic so far. We've had great reviews and emails from readers. Hundreds have turned out to booksignings across the country.

I sure hope I'm not alone at this signing so close to home. I hope to see some of you there.

And if not, I will keep working on the next project. It's what I do.

Have I reached the end? Or is this a new beginnning?

After thousands of miles, hundreds of books signed, and weeks on a book tour for American Leftovers, I arrived back in Nashville on May 1st. Like a traveling musician, I feel exhilarated and exhausted.

What now?

I've completed all my contracted books, with two of them coming out in 2024.

Once again, it seems, I am unemployed and wondering if I've reached the end of my writing career.

I've faced this question many times--at the end of 2005, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2018. I'm not alone. Most creatives can relate. We put heart and soul into our art, pray it will connect with others, and when it doesn't sell as well as hoped we must wrestle with our demons once again.

Doubt. Fear. Electric Bills. Hungry tummies.

Is this the end?

No, I believe it is a new beginning.

I'm sitting in a Nashville DMV right now, waiting in a long line to obtain a For Hire endorsement so I can get a part-time transportation job. I'm doing a Zoom call later today about a potential ghostwriting project. And I'm waiting to hear from my agent about another possibility.

As I wait between endings and beginnings, I will keep praying, hoping, and digging. I'm not digging a grave here. No, this is a seed bed. I am planting seeds.

I can't wait to see what grows next.

--Eric Wilson

www.WilsonWriter.com

We didn't plan to do a book tour around Easter. We didn't even consider the connections, not at first.

Easter is all about transformation, reconciliation, and resurrection. American Leftovers, our travel adventure and coming-of-age story, has already made differences in our own hearts and family. And it's gone beyond that.

One Amazon reviewer says, "This story grabs your heart and tugs in every way possible! It compels you to question yourself and your own history, your own religious life vs your spiritual life, belief vs dogma. It portrays the courage, resilience, faith, and deep love of family, but even more than that, the love of our Heavenly Father for his children, especially through all their doubts, questions, struggles, and mistakes."

Here in early April, we have reached the halfway point of our American Leftover booksignings. We've seen hundreds of friends, relatives, and readers in Washington, Oregon, and California. Ahead, lie Utah, Colorado, and Texas. Already, we've faced old abusers, formed new friendships, and seen relationships healed.

You know, much of this wouldn't have happened if not for the love and vulnerability of a father.

Our own dad, specifically.

He was parented in a generation that often buried family secrets, withheld affection, and functioned in constant shame. He didn't want that legacy to pass on down to us.

"I never thought I'd be the villain of a book," he said. "Still, you need to tell your story."

Yes, our dad made his mistakes. It wasn't always an easy journey for any of us. But he has have never been the villain to us. He's been human. We see him as Dad, even Daddy.

And here, decades later, we love him more than ever.

Why do we believe in the powerful love and resurrection life of Easter?

Because we are still seeing it through the perfect love of a heavenly Father, and through an earthly father who is learning, changing, and growing each day--right along with each one of us.

We all make mistakes. Some mistakes hurt only us, and some mistakes hurt others.

When our parents divorced in the wake of a church scandal, I thought I was doing good by protecting my emotionally fragile mother. My younger brother, however, was also hurting--and my mom had a way of poking at his wounds.

I took Mom's side. I told Shaun to forgive.

In the process, I didn't allow myself to hear his pain. He had wounds from both our parents, and I added to them. I was the big brother, trying to hold everything and everyone together, but my aloof responses only shoved his pain down deeper.

I am sorry, Shaun. Yes, we are brothers and best friends.

I want to do better.

These last few years, as my sister, Heidi, and I did the primary writing of American Leftovers, Shaun dictated his scenes to us over the phone. Only later did I realize we had skimmed over some of his personal points of pain. Writing is such an intimate journey, and we owed it to Shaun and to others involved to do a better job.

From the beginning, we knew the book's entire purpose was rooted in hope and reconciliation, so it seemed imperative for us to add more layers to his story. As the managing editor of the process, I didn't get it all right, but the finished book is a lot closer to fleshing out Shaun's side of the story.

We have grown closer and learned more about each other in this process.

We will keep doing so.

I love Shaun and am so thankful for his voice added to our family story. Shaun, Heidi, and I are more than leftovers, and keeping the sibling bond strong means everything to me.

"I really think it's time for us to write our memoir," my sister told me over the phone in early 2019. "It can give a lot of hope to people who have endured family and spiritual trauma."

"You'll have to write it yourself," I said. "I have no creative energy."

I'd written 19 books in the previous 15 years, as well as numerous reviews, articles, short stories, and cancelled book projects. I was now working 50 hours a week as a logistics manager at Staples, commuting another 10 hours a week.

A few weeks later, though, I was up all night. Praying. Full of restless energy. Arguing with God.

And then the title came to me. American Leftovers.

I knew then we were going to do this somehow. It would be my 20th book, with tons of writing help from my sister, Heidi Wilson Messner, and lots of memories and accounts from our brother, Shaun Paul Wilson. The title described the feelings we still dealt with, after living overseas and coming home to America as children, feeling like we didn't belong, It also described the leftover feelings after our church fell apart and our dad, the pastor, ran off with a teenaged girl from the congregation. Considering our mother was a master of creating meals out of leftovers, the title also felt like an ode to our mom, who died in late 2008.

But how could three of us, living in Tennessee, California, and Washington, all get together to write this book? Were we willing to dive deeply into the past, full of both the good and the bad?

In June 2019, we converged for a hiking and camping trip in Olympic National Park, just Heidi, Shaun, and I. We spent ten days walking, talking, sorting through the past and defining our futures. It was a painful yet healing process, which we continued again in 2020 and 2021. Finally, in June of 2022, we had a fully edited manuscript and a publisher who wanted to help tell our story. We were thrilled! And a little scared.

Part coming-of-age story, part travel adventure, and part spiritual memoir, American Leftovers releases in late March/early April 2023. It has been nearly four years since the project started. It has involved mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical sweat and tears. It has been quite the journey. We believe it will encourage, challenge, and inspire others who have survived family, religion, and the American Dream.

It is really happening. We are putting it all out there.

And to think, it's all my sister's fault.

--Eric Wilson

I met Steven Allen Young while he was still one of the homeless in Nashville. He had spent 8 years in prison, 5 years on the streets, and nearly 40 years apart from his first wife. Things were dark. Very dark.

And I do love a story with dark edges.

Within a year of meeting Steven, I found out he was no longer living on the streets and had started a ministry to the homeless. He doesn't just seek out those on the corners, but also those under train tracks, behind vacant lots, and in overgrown greenways--many of whom you pass every day without knowing it. These are the ones who have often lost hope. Steven and his team take them practical supplies as well as care and concern as fellow human beings.

Which is fantastic!

And I do also love a story with light at the center.

Five years after meeting Steven, he and I started working on a book together, titled From Chains to Change. It was my 19th book, and it recounts his troubled childhood and his choices which took him down many a dark road. He owns up to each one of those choices, and he is a better man for having done so. In the process, he and his first wife reconnected and remarried. They are now well into a new life together, a truly amazing story!

If there is one book which captures all of what I love about writing, it is this. It has darkness--a lot of it--and ends with lots of light as well, though never in a sappy way. There is no penultimate come-to-Jesus moment. It is a story still unfolding, and it is the perfect combination of my storytelling skills, allowing me to crawl into another character's skin and speak. Even Steven's wife couldn't tell where my writing and Steven's interviews with me overlapped. It was a tough journey artistically, spiritually, and emotionally.

It was also one of the most rewarding of my life.

If you haven't read this book, then I have a hard time even calling you a fan of my writing. This is me at my best--and worst. Me at my brightest--and darkest. From Chains to Change is the type of book which defines me as a writer and as a person committed to using my talents for the God's glory.

Go read it. Laugh, cry, get angry, gasp, fall to your knees.

I did all of the above while capturing it on paper.

I had given up on writing.

I was done.

Despite great feedback on some submitted books, they were rejected, and so in late 2014 I went to work in mid-level management for Office Depot. After 10 years of writing for a living, regular paychecks and benefits were not things I was used to, and I embraced this new normal.

In 2018, out of the blue, another writing opportunity came along. Would I be interested in writing a novelization of the screenplay for Samson, a soon-to-be-released film?

Samson. One of the Bible's original heroes, and also one of its biggest idiots.

Of course, I was interested.

I had 5 weeks to write the novel. I dropped down to 10 hours a week at Office Depot, thanks to a very flexible boss named Jesse, and read through hundreds of pages of research on that time period in Hebrew history.

Here's how it worked: I went to my Office Depot job from 6 to 8 a.m. each morning, then came home and took care of my wife, who had fallen ill with some debilitating virus. Once she was settled, I wrote and wrote and wrote, usually till 10 or 11 p.m.

I loved writing the story of Samson. I put his scenes in first person, present tense, wanting him to come alive for me and for readers. I had a blast with this story, given total freedom to write, since I didn't even see the movie or final screenplay until after I was done with the novel. It is still one of my best pieces of work, full of action, adventure, and romance.

Carolyn, thank God, got better by the time I was done with the book.

I was thrilled with Samson, even if the cover looked like a sappy romance. I knew it was a well-researched, very readable story. I also has fun creating the map in the front of the book, for my own writing purposes and for the aid of readers.

The movie bombed. As a result, the book didn't get picked up by many bookstores. And I went back to work fulltime for another year and a half at Office Depot.

But I will always love this 18th book of mine. It is truly one of my best.

Sometimes the only way around is through, and for me, going through the career, health, and financial hardships have all led to my current status as a fulltime author of 22 books, with nearly a million copies in print.

Flaubert called it "long patience," and yes, that is what it takes to reach your goals.

Even so-called overnight successes pay the price somewhere. Nobody reaches the finish line without a lot of sweat and tears.

It will hurt. It will seem hopeless.

But you will rise up like an eagle and renew your strength. Your time is not over yet. I know mine's not.

--Eric Wilson

WilsonWriter.com