Page 14

The road on the cover of my memoir, Rise & Climb: Finding Purpose Through Pain, is Morrill Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The person walking down it is me. The redwoods still bear the scars of the Lexington Fire, but now soar high into the forest canopy. I feel connected to their strength. We all survived the fire, and we’re still growing.

I grew up on Morrill Road, where my parents still live today. In 1985, we lost our home to the Lexington Fire. My family rebuilt, only to lose our home again in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Even that didn’t stop us—we always bounced back.

I carry that strength and determination through life. Difficult things will happen, but we get to choose how we respond. Our experiences in the mountains shaped the philosophy that stays with me today: there is fuel within the struggle. I’ve worked to turn that fuel into something meaningful.

Rise & Climb is about loss, fatherhood, music, and finding a way forward when your life has drifted far from the person you hoped to become. At 28, I barely recognized myself. Moving forward required a commitment to small, repeated actions: getting better at the things that mattered, and letting go of the things that pulled me away from them.

That process became the foundation of my book. Music runs throughout the story. As a recording artist, I wrote songs during different chapters of my life, often while I was still trying to understand what I was experiencing. Those songs helped shape the memoir. For the audiobook, I narrated the story myself

I am delighted to announce the October 23 release of Death on the Graf Zeppelin. This deeply researched historical mystery features the real-life Lady Grace Drummond-Hay as the sleuth. In 1928, Lady Hay was the first woman to cross the Atlantic on a passenger airship. The voyage made headlines all around the world. News of a murder on board was not one of them.

and included my original music, allowing listeners to hear the songs alongside the experiences that inspired them. Morrill Road connects the child I was with the person telling the story today. That same road also appears in the book’s closing pages.

There is something especially meaningful about sharing this with the community my parents still call home. For readers who have their own history along these mountain roads, I hope parts of my story feel familiar, and that the journey offers encouragement for whatever they are working through now.

Rise & Climb: Finding Purpose Through Pain is now out from Skyhorse Publishing, with distribution through Simon & Schuster. It’s available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Audible. com and more. The original soundtrack will be released October 15. Learn more at risenclimb.com.