A Life Of Sin
Book One
by
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Chapter 1 The Root of All Evil My life. It all started when I was ten years of age. At that time we lived in Elk Grove, California. Elk Grove at this particular time was the most “calm” place south of Sacramento. It was the place where you moved to if you had been poor and now were ready to move up in the world. And many did! Once anybody moved to Elk Grove, they demanded a certain respect and treatment from their lowly Sacramento family, and slowly but surely assimilated into its suburban image and boring culture. Although so many different peoples from different places were starting to reside in Elk Grove, Caucasians felt as if it were their turf. They acted on it, too, by calling the police on any coloured person who behaved differently from how Caucasians behaved. They also complained about the way we coloured people lived every chance they got, perhaps hoping that we’d get tired of the complaints and move out. There were even Caucasian gangs similar to the Ku Klux Klan that were formed on high school grounds and in parks out of hatred for coloured folks. I even had someone I thought was a good-hearted person say, “I hate how black people are moving into our neighborhoods. Why can’t they just stay in their gang-and-drug-infested neighborhoods and give us our peace?” Of course, I stopped believing that she was good-hearted there and then. And no, that didn’t take place in the 1970s. No, no! This took place in 2006, years after racism was proclaimed dead. To those who do not see and experience it, of course it seems that way!
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About the Book
Ricardo is a nineteen-year-old Native American teenager who is haunted by an event that happened when he was ten. He was forced to murder his family because his father was involved in drug trafficking, ripping off his boss, and then facing the consequences. Unable to function at school due to his traumas, he drops out, leading to living a routine that leads nowhere until his past comes knocking on the door, and he finds himself desperately trying to escape a life of sin with the help of his friends.
About the Author
I am Ricardo Ignacio, which is originally a Roman name that means “Powerful Fire.” I’m a Native American, descended from the people known as Chichimecah, and Cocopah. I first discovered that I had a passion for writing at age nine, in the sixth grade, when the school created a competition to see who could win the most votes for his or her short story. The competition was open to all fourth, fifth, and sixth graders who wanted to participate. The event took place on the playground where all the students and teachers sat in a huge circle and listened as each participant read his or her own short story out loud. I didn’t win the first-place award of a free pizza, but I did win something better: the realization that I had a passion for writing fictional stories that were usually developed out of the desire to escape the life that I lived. By age fourteen I was writing short novels and reading them to the other kids in the neighborhood. When I saw their eager faces as I read my stories, I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.