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March 2020
March 12, 2020
Marlon
James Keene's Blog- In With The Devil
Blog Post #1- Who am I?
My name is James Keene. I was known as a big shot in high school, and I lettered in three sports. I was the star running back, back when our football team went all the way to the state championship game. From the perspective of others, I lived an easy and successful life. Wherever I stayed, the latest corvette was always in the driveway, with a crotch rocket and a Harley in the garage, and a hot girl in the bedroom. As far as everyone was concerned I just as successful in college as I was in high school. However, that was not the case. My good fortune was never as good as it seemed. My parents never really got together well, and even when I was in high school we struggled financially. The business we ran wasn't enough, so being in high school and trying to keep up with the fast crowd I was hanging with, I had discovered a way to make easy and quick cash, that soon got me into some real legal trouble.
Blog Post #2
I took to selling drugs. With the charm, I acquired from my parents, and the fearlessness I felt from my experience in sports and martial arts, I was a natural at it. Out of high school, I didn't attend a big name college, I enrolled in a community college in the suburb of Chicago. I stopped going to classes after two years to deal full time to better help my dad with all the financial problems. To my surprise, he never questioned me about where I was getting all my money from. However, one day in 1996, the Feds came "knocking", and along with my front door, they shattered every dream I had, and every dream my dad had, too. In court, I pleaded guilty, with no idea that it would get me a sentence of 10 years to life. 10 months had passed and I was just barely starting to settle down to do my next 10 years in a Michigan federal prison when all of a sudden I got yanked right back to Illinois again. My prosecutor made me an offer, an offer that would change my life more than any prison sentence ever could. I was to be transferred undercover to this maximum-security penitentiary and psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Missouri. My objective was to somehow manage to get close enough to a man named Larry DeWayne Hall
BLOG POST #3
Hall was a criminal who was serving a life sentence for abducting and killing girls in a cornfield. They believed that Hall was responsible for more than twenty other killings. Hall was serving his life sentence in the penitentiary. My job, however, was not just to get close to Hall, I needed to get him to verbally confess and disclose details that had not been previously publicized. I was told that in return of this favor Beaumont would ask the judge to give me an early release. It still didn't make any sense to me though. Why me? Why did Beaumont want ME to go undercover? Beaumont told me that it was because I was perfect and because I was able to mix with anyone, from the street level to the board level. Despite the offer, I was still questioning if I wanted to go through with it. I was eventually convinced, however, and decided to go through with it but if I had any sort of confidence about an accomplishment this crazy mission it all suddenly melted away. "If you don't get us the location of that body... you don't get released." My heart dropped, It was one thing to hear Hall confess, but it was quite another to get inside his head and get him to reveal a burial place that he may have repressed or even forgotten. All of a sudden, the mission seemed impossible but I still didn't back down from it.
BLOG POST #4- What are my favorite things?
I've always been a pretty big athlete and I've also had a love for sports. In high school, I loved football and track as well as martial arts. I was a black belt in taekwondo, karate, and kung fu. I was also the star running back for my high school football team the year we made it to the state championship.
BLOG POST #5- What were/are my goals and ambitions?
My main goals had always been to help out my family, especially my dad. My father had always been an idol to me, I always looked up to him, so I was always looking for a way to finally help him out. My goal was never to get into the drug dealing business but I somehow just fell into it as a way to make a little quick cash. Unfortunately, we all know how that played out for me and the trouble I got into as a result of it.
BLOG POST #6- What is my advice to the younger generation?
In life, people can take a few wrong turns that destroy them. I'm one of those people. I was given a second chance, not only to save myself but to redeem society for the wrong choices I made. As I've posted about in previous blogs, I gave into selling drugs in high school as a way to earn a bit of easy money in order to help my parents with the financial situations they were in. Due to this decision, I gave up attending college and as a result, it only got me into legal trouble later on when the feds found me out. My life from then on was nothing but a rollercoaster of emotions filled with stress and worries, especially when it came to my sentences and the conditions of the deal I had made in the courtroom. To the younger generation, especially those struggling with financial problems, there are other ways to make money. Don't make the mistake I made. I was living a good life, yes with the occasional problems here and there, but either way, I was leading a successful life that I later ruined by choosing to become a dealer. Drugs ruin lives, whether you're a dealer or a buyer.
Expository Post
The content and blog posts all relate to the character because it expresses the life and story of the character throughout the book. In all of the blogs, I made sure to include quotes and phrases that the author himself used in the book to make the blogs just that much more realistic. I felt that in doing this it would truly lean towards the perspective of the author and make it seem like James Keene himself was writing these blogs. The first image is of James Keene (the author) so that the people reading the blogs have a visual understanding of what he looks like. The four other images all show the different things James Keene went through when he was in high school and college. It shows how Keene was a star football player who always had the latest corvette in his driveway and from the outside perspective of others lead a successful life. The last two images represent the path he took in choosing to become a drug dealer to earn a little extra cash and the reason I chose to include the courtroom image was because this is where the majority of the setting of the book takes place. As for the layout and theme I chose for the blog, I chose the color scheme of dark grey/black, with orange because it matches the colors of the book cover, the theme has no particular significance to the author. The blogs as a whole showcase the life and decisions that James Keene made as a result of just trying to financially help his parents. It shows the different events and things Keene did and lived through.
