About Mitty Walters

UPDATE – The information on this page is fairly sanitized. If you came here looking for the more candid version of my life story, the one that includes details about a murder I witnessed as a kid, please go here:
My Life: The Ugly Bits
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Ok, so if you’ve been here before, then you might have noticed that I promised to revise this page and projected a date upon which I would put up a new version. I changed that date a few times because I’ve been toying with the idea of just being honest with you guys. No, that’s not to imply that I’m suddenly going to out my real name or anything.

Rather, I’m considering taking full advantage of the fact that most of my “real-life” acquaintances have no clue that I write. In fact, until recently, very few of even my closest friends/family knew.

Point being, this disconnect between identities provides an ironic opportunity: Because I’m lying about my name, I can be truthful about some of the, uh, more ‘colorful’ details about my life.

The things I’m considering sharing about myself are specifically the sort that would never come up at, say, the cocktail party my wife and I attended last weekend. Certain aspects of my previous life are simply not appropriate topics of discussion for the polite company I keep as an adult. However, those are the very experiences that came in handy for my writing.

It occurs to me that if someone takes the time to come visit my website, it’s because they want to know about me, the guy who wrote Breaking Gravity. Such a visitor could probably care less about the prim-n-proper stuff that appears on my resumé. Maybe I owe it to my readers to speak frankly?

On the other hand, who am I? I’m nobody, just an entertainer. If somebody enjoyed my writing enough to visit this page, maybe I should just spin some entertaining picture that confirms how wholesome and respectable I am?

I dunno.

For now, here’s a little nugget: Breaking Gravity was written by a high school dropout.

How ’bout them apples? My guess is that that fact would probably cause somebody who enjoyed the book to suddenly second-guess their own judgement. How could an erudite reader be taken in by such an uneducated rube?

*sigh*

Lest anyone get their panties in a twist, I suppose I should point out that getting kicked out of school was NOT the end of my education. Product of a broken marriage, I ended up homeless at sixteen. Still, I managed to stay in school until I caught the boot during my senior year. Though I did not walk the stage with my high school classmates, I did scoop up a GED which I later replaced with some higher education (three college degrees: Business Admin, Management, and Corporate Finance).

Anyway, recently I’ve come to realize that writing Breaking Gravity is pretty much the most authentic thing I’ve done as an adult. All of my life experiences––good, bad, other––had equal footing. There was no need to compartmentalize, hide, or downplay anything. Knowing how to conduct myself while traveling in well educated social circles was no more important than knowing what it’s like to run with a rough crowd.

I deeply, deeply enjoyed that experience. I felt completely unshackled. When the story needed a detail, such as how to use a flat head screwdriver to silently break a car window, I simply used the knowledge… with zero concern that someone might later wonder how I might know something like that.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I kind of need to be real on this page. But the question I’m wrestling with is just how real to get?