ROCKINGHAM — While Alan Little was in prison on a federal drug conviction, his mother told him that his voice would be heard.
That voice is coming through in his latest book, “Beneath the Surface of the Skin,” published by PlayTy Multimedia.
“She saw the vision before me,” he said about his future in writing. “I never understood what she meant.”
Little was serving a 20-year sentence and had never taken a writing class.
But five years after his mother’s passing in 2000, Little began to put words to paper, writing his first book.
PASSION FOR WRITING
While in prison, Little wrote five books, with the first being published in 2007.
“When I first started writing, I was raw writing as far as like, the lifestyle I was living …street life,” Little recalled. “When I went into the system, I wasn’t a man between the ears. I was a man physically … I was 30 years old before I became a man.”
After that, Little said he didn’t want to write about the street life.
Little’s latest book, which he started planning prior to his release, deals with the topics of law, romance and race relations.
The book follows the story of a no-holds-barred African American female prosecutor, who “clawed her way to the top by any means necessary,” and loses her first case after a decade, damaging her career and sending her into a depression.
She falls in love with a white man from Alabama, who is forced to choose between her and his family. But eventually the families come together when the couple’s son becomes a blood donor for his grandfather.
Little said it took him about six months to write.
He added that he has a lot of time to think of stories while on the road as a truck driver.
CHANGES
When Little was released from prison in 2018, a lot had changed.
“I’d never seen things like a phone with a camera on it,” he said. When I left (in 1998), they had bag phones. I’d never seen a flip-phone.”
Little said people doing that much time are lucky to have their sanity when they come home.
“I used to pray for that every day — ‘Just let me keep my sanity and everything else will work out,” he said. “It was tough.”
Being raised in the church is the only thing that kept him grounded while incarcerated.
One major event that changed him was not being able to attend his mother’s funeral because of being locked up.
Now, instead of being part of the problem, Little is hoping to be part of the solution and has plans of speaking to kids about his experiences and encouraging them to make the right decisions.
“When I see the youth now, it tears me up because … they don’t understand,” he said, referencing recent shootings involving teenagers. “I’ve been in there with guys, youngsters, they come in there and they can’t handle it. You don’t have no guns in there, you gotta be a man in there. Them youngsters come in there, the first thing they do is call for their mother.”
“Beneath the Surface of the Skin” will be available for purchase on Dec. 20.
