A new series of books I’ve been working on the past few years is now available in the store. Check it out let me know what you think.

Synopsis:

The future didn’t arrive with flying cars or world peace. It came crawling in with blood on its hands.

Years of division tore the United States apart, until the second civil war split it into five fractured territories — the Regional States of America. Out of the ashes rose something worse: a patchwork of corporate fiefdoms where banks and megacorps carved the map like a carcass, and the stock market became the nation’s pulse.

The most profitable business of all was misery. Private prisons swelled to bursting, their ledgers fattened by slave labor and laws designed to make freedom itself illegal. Travel without an elite pass? Life sentence. Speak against an exec? Disappear forever. Eight out of ten citizens wore shackles.

Then came Xi Jin Lee — quadrillionaire, genetic alchemist, and ruler of Region 2. Through his Lee Corporation, he played god, turning men into monsters with Titan serum, and played emperor with Deathmatch TV. The formula was “ancient: gladiator pits reborn for a streaming age, where hundreds of prisoners were thrown into gauntlets until no one walked out alive.

In a year, DTV became the world’s addiction. By the second, the empire spread to all five regions under its new director, Prince Khan — an energy baron who had bled the lithium market dry. Together, they built towering arenas, exported the bloodsport to two continents, and crowned regional champions like warlords over their domains.

For the corporate elite, it was perfect: entertainment and endless profit. For the rest of the world, it was just another way to die.

The following are the journal entries from John Murdoch the prisoner, Zoe Carter the prize fighter and Saul Horton the executive.

You ever notice how the world sometimes feels like a canvas being torn instead of painted on? There’s this undercurrent, this subtle hum, of forces that thrive on keeping us at odds especially when it comes to race and class. I call them the divisive operators, those voices, systems, or even algorithms that seem to have a mission: to make sure we’re too busy fighting each other to notice the bigger picture. It’s like they’re handing out scripts for a play where poor folks, no matter their skin tone, end up battling over scraps while the real feast happens somewhere else.

Picture this: two neighbors, both struggling to make rent, both hustling to keep food on the table. One’s Black, one’s White, but their worries? Pretty much the same. Yet, somehow, they’re nudged into seeing each other as the problem. Maybe it’s a news headline that pits one group against another, or a politician’s soundbite that stokes fear, or even those sneaky algorithms on our screens that amplify the loudest, angriest voices. These divisive operators they’re like artists of chaos, painting mistrust where there could be solidarity.

But let’s slow down, take a breath, and ask: Why? Why is it so easy to get us to turn on each other? I think it’s because division is a distraction. When poor folks Black, White, Brown, whatever are too busy arguing over who’s got it worse, we’re not asking the bigger questions. Like, who’s profiting while we’re all scraping by? Who’s writing the rules that keep us stuck? It’s almost like there’s a playbook: keep the races divided, keep the poor fighting, and keep the system humming along without anyone looking too closely at the gears.

Now, I’m not saying there’s some shadowy figure twirling a mustache, plotting it all out (though, let’s be real, sometimes it feels that way). A lot of this comes from systems that have been around forever economic structures, media habits, even the way we’re taught history. They lean into our differences, amplify them, and make us forget we’re all trying to paint our own little masterpiece of a life. Social media? Man, it’s like a megaphone for this stuff. Algorithms don’t care about truth; they care about clicks. And nothing gets clicks like outrage. So, we end up with feeds full of “us vs. them,” and before you know it, we’re all a little more isolated, a little more suspicious.

But here’s the flip side, the part that feels like a sunrise after a long night: we can choose a different canvas. What if we stepped back, took a deep breath, and saw each other as collaborators instead of competitors? Imagine poor folks across all races linking arms, sharing stories, and saying, “Hey, we’re in this together.” That’s the art of connection, and it’s more powerful than any divisive operator out there. It starts small: a conversation, a shared meal, a moment of listening instead of shouting. It’s like sketching the first lines of a new painting, one where we’re all in the frame.

So, how do we get there? Maybe it’s about noticing when we’re being played when that headline or post is trying to spark division instead of understanding. Maybe it’s about seeking out stories that remind us of our shared struggles, like the way a single mom in one neighborhood and a factory worker in another are both fighting the same bills, the same fears. It’s about creating spaces online, in our communities, in our hearts where we can be real with each other. No filters, no agendas, just humans trying to make it through.

A shadow moves behind the scenes, pulling strings we barely notice. It’s like waking up in a James Bond movie, where hidden groups, call them secret societies, elites, or puppet masters, shape our days. They control the flow of money, news, and power, their hands invisible yet heavy. To them, we’re not far from savages, chasing screens and scraps while they commit crimes in plain sight, daring us to see. Take the Epstein files. Names of the powerful, tangled in stories of exploitation, float in whispers but never fully break the surface. These files, locked away or conveniently lost, point to a network that thrives on silence, where wealth shields the guilty. Meanwhile, in Gaza, a genocide unfolds, homes reduced to rubble, lives erased, yet the world’s stagehands call it conflict, not crime. The same system that buries those files fuels this destruction, profiting from chaos while we’re told to look away. Billionaires multiply, their wealth a tower casting shadows over the rest of us. The gap between them and everyone else widens, a chasm we navigate daily rising rents, stagnant wages, dreams deferred. They live above the rules, untouchable, while voices like Alex Jones or smaller platforms crying out against this script are muted. Deplatformed, demonized, or drowned out, they’re silenced not for lies but for daring to point at the stagehands behind the curtain. I see this play unfold. My work on canvas, raw truth fights to cut through the fog. But the daily grind, the news cycle, the endless distractions pull me to conform, to accept the script. The irony stings: we’re cast as savages in their story, yet they’re the ones writing atrocities, acting as if we won’t notice. Some reject this script. They speak, create, or simply refuse to play along, choosing to see the truth over the lies. In my studio, I fight to paint outside their lines, to make art that wakes us up. This world, scripted by hidden hands, thrives on our blindness. I ask: will we keep playing their savages, or will we rewrite the ending?

A web of code, invisible yet omnipresent, threads through the lives of 95% of the world’s connected souls. Social media algorithms, designed to serve up tailored snippets of joy, news, and distraction, have become the unseen architects of our days. At first glance, they’re tools sorting posts, curating feeds, painting our digital lives with effortless precision. But beneath their surface, they wield a darker palette, shaping thoughts with a subtlety that rivals any drug. These algorithms, fed by our clicks and swipes, learn us intimately. They dangle dopamine in bursts majority of users check their feeds within minutes of waking, chasing the high of a like, a share, a moment of relevance. The mind, caught in this cycle, grows restless, tethered to the next notification. Over time, tolerance builds: we need more posts, more outrage, more validation to feel the same spark. Abruptly stepping away brings its own withdrawal loneliness, unease, the gnawing fear of missing out. Studies reveal the toll: heavy users report heightened anxiety, depression creeping like rust through their thoughts, their sense of self eroded by endless comparison. As an artist, I see this canvas for what it is. My paintbrush demands slowness, intention, the raw pulse of creation but the algorithm pulls me toward its rhythm, urging me to post, to perform, to reduce my art to a thumbnail for likes. The human connections I once sketched in bold, messy strokes conversations, laughter, shared silence fade, replaced by a feed that dictates who I am. The architects of this epidemic? Tech giants, pocketing billions while their algorithms sculpt our minds. Investigations exposed their designs crafted not just to engage but to addict, prioritizing profit over sanity. Yet, glimmers of resistance emerge. Communities are turning offline, trading curated feeds for unfiltered moments. Some, like me, are reclaiming the canvas, using art to disrupt the algorithm’s grip, to remind us what it means to feel without a screen’s permission. This invisible web, spun from lines of code, holds the power to repaint our souls, to trade our humanity for a scroll’s fleeting thrill. As an artist, I stand at the easel and ask: will we let these algorithms define our masterpiece, or will we dare to wield the brush ourselves? The choice, for now, remains ours.