Published work
What do you do with a life that wasn't supposed to amount to anything?
For Thelonious Mitchell — Theo — that's not a rhetorical question. It's the one he's been answering his whole life. He was born in South Phoenix, raised by a mother who loved him but couldn't hold herself together, and eventually taken in by an aunt and uncle who gave him a fighting chance. By the time the To Die To Live series begins, Theo is already carrying more than most people twice his age — grief, displacement, the quiet shame of not fitting in, and the burning, unstoppable need to become something. That need is what drives him. It's also what breaks him, again and again, in ways that feel uncomfortably true.
The To Die To Live series is a character study told one hard chapter at a time. It doesn't flinch from pain, but it never wallows in it either. These are books about a young man navigating worlds that weren't built with him in mind — suburban high schools, Midwest college towns, professional spaces where he's always the youngest person in the room and often the only one who looks like him. Through it all, Theo is searching for the same thing most of us are: a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, and someone to love who will actually stay.
Books
2016
To Die To Live
(Book 1 — To Die To Live Series)
He grew up in South Phoenix, where the streets taught hard lessons and grief came early. He never expected to survive it. He never expected to want to.
Thelonious "Theo" Mitchell has spent most of his young life just trying to stay afloat — invisible at home, invisible at school, carrying a grief he doesn't have words for. Taken in by his aunt and uncle after his mother's death, he finds himself transplanted into a world where he doesn't belong and doesn't know how to ask for help.
Then he meets Draven.
For the first time, Theo has someone in his corner — a friend who sees past the walls, who talks about futures like they're actually possible, who makes Theo believe that where you come from doesn't have to be where you stay. It's the friendship he never knew he needed.
And then it's taken from him.
To Die To Live is where Theo's journey begins — a raw, deeply human story about loss, resilience, and the terrifying, necessary act of letting someone in.
2017
The Chosen Path
(Book 2 — To Die To Live Series)
He left South Phoenix to build something new. He just didn't know yet how much it would cost him.
Thelonious "Theo" Mitchell arrived in Kansas carrying everything he survived and nothing he needed. College was supposed to be a fresh start — new city, new team, new version of himself. And for a while, it almost felt that way. Then he met Sabrinna, and for the first time since losing Draven, he let his guard down completely.
That was his first mistake.
Now, with his heart broken and his future uncertain, Theo is forced to confront the question that's been following him since the streets of South Phoenix: Who am I when I stop running? The answer leads him somewhere unexpected — a group of kids who need exactly what Theo never had growing up. Someone who shows up.
The Chosen Path is a raw, deeply human story about heartbreak, identity, and the moment a young man stops drifting and starts deciding — on his own terms — who he is going to be.
Spring 2026
The Puprose of Life
(Book 3 — To Die To Live Series)
Thelonious Mitchell came to Kansas to start over. A college freshman who walked away from a football scholarship, he found new purpose working with at-risk youth at Riverside Learning Academy — mentoring kids like Tommy, who needs someone to believe in him, and DeMarco, whose anger is really just grief wearing a different face.
Then a broken taillight that wasn't broken changes everything.
After a racially motivated traffic stop leaves Theo humiliated, handcuffed, and carrying wounds he doesn't know how to name, the man who taught kids to control their feelings can no longer control his own. The trauma spreads — into his work, his relationships, and finally into the one place it was never supposed to go: the gym where the children who trust him are just trying to play basketball.
The Purpose of Life is the story of what happens when the person who holds everyone else together starts to fall apart — and what it takes to put yourself back together without losing who you were trying to become.
Fall 2026
The Long Walk Home
(Book 4 — To Die To Live Series)
He survived the streets of South Phoenix. He survived losing his mother. He survived the night on the side of the road that nearly broke everything he had left.
Thelonious "Theo" Mitchell has spent his whole life running — from grief, from the past, from anyone who got too close. For the first time, six months after the incident with Officer Kowalski, he was finally starting to stand still. The kids at the academy trusted him again. Therapy was working. His life felt like something he was living instead of just surviving.
Then the phone rings.
Aunt Linda — the woman who took him in at sixteen when the world let him down, who gave him a place to land when everything else fell apart, has cancer. And she's asking for him.
Now Theo must fly back to the city that made him, the house where grief first learned his name, and the family he's been keeping at arm's length since the moment he was strong enough to leave. Caught between the life he's built and the people who built him, he will have to face the question he's been avoiding since the very first page of this journey:
When everything you've survived has finally prepared you to be there for someone, are you brave enough to show up?
The Long Road Home is a raw, deeply human story about grief, growth, and the courage it takes to stop running — and finally find your way back to the people who never stopped waiting.
Spring/Summer 2027
Where I Belong
(Book 5 — To Die To Live Series)
He chose Phoenix. Now comes the hardest part — learning what it means to stay.
For the first time in his life, Thelonious "Theo" Mitchell isn't running. He left Kansas, left the academy, left the kids who needed him and the career he'd built from nothing — and he came home. To Aunt Linda. To Uncle Jeffrey. To the city that shaped him and the mountains that have been watching him since before he knew who he was.
He just didn't realize how much it would cost.
Back in Phoenix, Theo is learning what it looks like to be present — for Aunt Linda's treatments, for Uncle Jeffrey's quiet 11 o'clock conversations, for the girl he isn't ready to name yet, for the version of himself that finally stopped running long enough to ask the real question.
Where do I actually belong?
Between the life he left in Kansas and the one slowly forming in Phoenix, between the boy who arrived at Bethel with a garbage bag of clothes and nowhere else to go, and the man sitting on the campus green one last time before he drives away — Theo is finally doing the hardest thing he's ever done.
Not surviving. Not escaping. Not becoming.
Just being here.
Where I Belong is a raw, deeply human story about the courage it takes to stop moving — and trust, for the first time, that the place you've chosen is finally the right one.