Featured Interview With Ikish Mullens
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in the central ward of Newark, New Jersey, where I lived until the age of 5 or 6. Then around 1987-88, my family and I moved from the central ward of Newark to Bradley Courts, or Hoodaville as we call it, which is located in the west ward of Newark, where I remained until I graduated from high school in 2000.
Moreover, soon after graduating from Newark Central High School, I began working for the Newark Board of Education, which was the first job that I can recall ever having. Then after a year of working for the Board of Education, I landed a job in the corporate world, working in the copy center for a law firm based in the downtown Newark area, where I remained for the next five years, up until the time I began writing Mind Games: A Brick City Story.
Then around 2005-06, my family and I moved again. However, this final move was bittersweet for me and brothers, because it meant leaving Hoodaville, our friends, and everything we knew behind, in order to relocate across town to a section of Newark that we knew nothing about.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
It may sound funny or weird for me to say this, but I didn’t like to read as a child. And whenever I had to do a book report or essay for school, I would always wait until the last minute, and basically skim through the book and pick out the different plot points. But, once I reached high school and had to do a twenty-five word research paper, my views toward reading began to gradually change.
As for when I started writing, I began writing novels, poems, and songs around the seventh grade . . . Yeah I know I said I hated to read and that I didn’t take reading seriously until high school, but I wasn’t dumb by a long shot. I was the perfect student in school . . . I fast learner. That’s how I was able to write the material that I wrote, because I taught myself by studying what others did.
And as I read different genres of books, a switch flicked in my mind, and I was like, “Hum, I can do this.” I should write my own book. So after I had hand written a few novels, my mother told me that I needed to type the pages, but I didn’t know how a novel should be structured. So again, I went back to the book that I had read, and I compared their structures together. And after going from book to book looking at the proper structure of a novel, I created a template of the structure in MS Word, in order to make it easier for me to replicate with every novel that I was preparing to type.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have an eclectic collection of authors on my book shelf and ebook devices that I like to read, from authors like Al-Saadiq Banks, Robert Greene, 50 Cent, Jerry and Esther Hicks, Pam Grout, Sister Souljah, Rhonda Byrne, James Redfield, and Donald Goines to name a few.
However, even though I like to read and personally write urban fiction novels, I like to read books about business. But my favorite books to read on my downtime are in the new age/spiritual & religious genres.
Yes I said new age/spiritual & religious . . . Don’t judge me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Mind Games: A Brick City Story is the first of many novels that I plan to release through my publishing company, MYCA Publishing, and it is set in the fictional world of Newark.
This is where the Brick City Story comes into play, because around the world Newark is known as Newark Brick City. No matter how many people outside of Newark, New Jersey may try to claim or use the name for whatever reason, but everyone knows that the real Brick City is in Newark, New Jersey.
However, I use the Brick City as kind of a backdrop for Mind Games: A Brick City Story, because when some people hear the name Brick City, they automatically focus on the dark side Newark, because all of the negative publicity that it receives from the media. And I am not saying that what you see on the news or read in the newspapers are false, because the stories are true, but they’re just not as bad as the media make Newark out to be.
But getting back to Mind Games: A Brick City Story, there was so many ways that I could have written the story, with all the material that I had access to. Therefore, instead of getting deep into the drug aspect of the city, I decided to take my readers behind the proverbial velvet rope, and deep into the hustler’s lives, and show a side of the drug game that the media doesn’t show.
And no . . . In no way shape or form am I trying to glorify the drug game through the use of Mind Games: A Brick City Story. In fact, my intentions and reasoning behind Mind Games: A Brick City Story is to shed light on the internal conflicts that most of the hustlers face while partaking in such a shady lifestyle.
For example, Desmond Jones is the main character of Mind Games: A Brick City Story, who after waking up one day learned that his estranged father Raymond Jones had recently died and left him everything that he owned.
Moreover, as the story opens up, the reader finds Des at his father’s funeral, where he meets his grandmother Gwen for the first time. And from their first meeting, Des’ world is rocked to the core, because while he’s dealing with Ray’s sudden death, and the fact he now a millionaire, Gwen makes him promise to keep it all a secret until he accepts his inheritance and learns the family business.
Basically, in a nut shell, I’ve been told by some of my readers that Mind Games: A Brick City Story has some of everything that they love about urban fiction, or street fiction novels into one place. And that’s exactly what I went for when I wrote the story. Because as a reader myself, I like to be entertained with every page and chapter of a novel that I read. Therefore, while writing Mind Games: A Brick City Story, whenever I felt that the chapter wasn’t interesting, or if I felt is didn’t add to the drama and suspense of the story, I took is out. And while I was in the proofreading and editing stage, I deleted whole chapters, paragraphs, and dialogs from the story, because I felt like they were slowing the story down. Because as I said before, I wanted to take my readers on a ride . . . A Fast ride . . . A ride that they’d had to see come to an end.
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