Poet William Blake
There’s an unbelievable story behind my upcoming novel, Caged to Kill that’ll be released this Tuesday April, 2nd . It’ll be exactly two years to the day on April Fool’s Day that this story began. I still shake my head to this day in disbelief. Was it pure coincidence or Providence that caused my path to cross with William Blake? You be the judge.
My wife gave me the letter she had pulled from the cascade of junk mail that had flooded our mailbox on that fateful morning. It was Saturday, April 1, 2017 and I thought the letter she handed me was a prank.
The business envelope address was handwritten all in caps to “THOMAS A. SWYERS, ESQ. ATTORNEY AT LAW.” On the left-hand side of the letter, all in caps again and underlined three times–apparently for emphasis—it read “LEGAL MAIL.” I thought this was unusual because if you send something addressed to an attorney, why would it be anything else but legal? Looks like a prank, I thought.
The machine-printed return address in the upper left-hand corner was disconcerting. The sender was the “Great Meadow Correctional Facility.” But I’d never had any dealings with this maximum-security prison, or any prison for that matter. I’ve never visited a prison even though my uncle was a chaplain at a prison in Tennessee. I didn’t have any clients at this prison or in any prison for that matter. As a judge, I had heard administrative law cases. I’d never practiced one day of criminal law in my thirty-year legal career and that decision was intentional.
I never wanted to deal with the bad guys, either as a defense attorney or as a prosecutor. If anything, I wanted to practice positive law—a vague specialty I defined as any endeavor that had a positive impact on people’s lives. Criminal law was not positive law, at least not in my book. Anyone who knows me knows this side of me. Smells like a prank, I thought.
Back to the letter. Beneath “Great Meadow Correctional Facility” was an underlined blank space for a “name” and another blank space for a “DIN.” Those spaces were filled with the handwritten name of “William Blake, DIN: 87-A-5771.”
On the reverse side of the envelope, “New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Offender Correspondence Program” was machine printed on the flap. Below it, the handwritten name and DIN of “William Blake DIN 87-A-5771” appeared once again.
But I didn’t know any William Blake, except for the famous English poet by the same name. But that William Blake died nearly two hundred years ago. Must be a prank, I concluded. Someone who knew my literary side as an author was playing a joke on me.
Or so I thought. But I was wrong. I’d come to learn in the coming months that William Blake, a poet, was alive and living in a box in Comstock, New York. Yes, you read that right—William Blake, a poet, was trapped in a box–in the middle of nowhere–and he wanted out.
Yes, I know it sounds all too like the Prince Albert tobacco joke. Do you remember that prank? You call up a drugstore and ask the clerk, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” When the clerk replies, “Yes,” you deliver the punchline, “Then let him out.” But this was no prank. Prince Albert wasn’t in a can, but William Blake was trapped in a box.
Little did I know then about the course my life would take over the next two years in trying to understand Mr. Blake’s predicament. When Caged to Kill is released on April 2, 2019, you will come to know the story behind the book. I think you will find it facinating reading.
By clicking here, you can order the ebook for Caged to Kill.
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