I post this video in honor of a friend I knew in school, but not real well.

I went to high school with this guy, but we weren’t good friends or anything.

Still though, I love to see a fellow nobody, raised in the brutal hallways of inner-city Fulton High School (in Knoxville), with practically no chance of breaking out of the cycle, dreaming big and chasing his dreams with every ounce of energy and passion that he has.

Guys like us have the odds stacked against us, and we lack connections and will probably statistically speaking never “make it,” but we’ll for damn sure fight and claw and pull and work our way as high as we can up the summit, reaching from root to tree to loose rock, till our fingers bleed, till our muscles cramp so bad that we can’t climb anymore, and then we’ll hold on for as long as we can.

And if we can muster the energy, we’ll reach for the next toehold. And if we fall, we fall with pride, for we tried. We stepped away from the crowd. We ignored the laughs and the jeers. We fought the good fight.

I love you, Joey. I hope you make so much money that you don’t know what to do with it. That you throw some scholarships out to some future kids who want to break the cycle, as well.

Never give up. Never. Give. Up. NEVER. GIVE. UP. F–king bring it, and tear the house down.

You can do this. You motivate the shit out of me.

Stan R. Mitchell

Oak Ridge, Tenn.

P.S. Please accept the greatest gift I can give, a book I believe to be worth $10,000.

P.P.S. Thanks to all who continue to make my novels a success. I seriously couldn’t have done it with everyone’s support. Thanks to your help, Little Man, and the Dixon County War  has gone as high as No. 16 on the Amazon UK Paid List (see here and here)! And my second novel, Sold Out, has also done well, going as high as No. 81 on the Amazon Paid List for the category of War (see here and here)! Thanks a million to my awesome friends, and if you’ve stumbled on my blog, you can learn more about both books here.