“Hello everyone, I am Ty Hamilton.

I wrote my first book “The Learning” in 2014. It was copywritten in 2015 and released in 2016. Thereafter, I wrote the other novels that followed it. I have been writing since I was 14 years old when my English teacher in Jr High School realized my talent and wrote a three-page letter to my mother. Mom didn’t think anything of it at the time and I too went on my way to find myself and my purpose in life.

After working jobs that I thought were best suited to my talents, I like many, found myself just working for the money to pay the bills. But everyone comes to a fork in the road. Is this it, is this how I will live my life, retire and die? To know me is to know I’m very militant, a rebel against all the injustice I saw growing up in the ‘60s and today. Being called everything except the child of God attending schools where I was the only brown face in the whole system. Venturing out of my safe black neighborhood to see what was so forbidden to my people and finding out it was nothing special. All the while, being the only one! So I chose the road less traveled.

At the age of 25 I went back to school, this time I would follow my heart…Radio and Television and English major. I zoomed past my classes and before I could graduate I interviewed for a radio job with a Blackman that was a former football player and owned and operated his business. Impressive, yes and it woke me up to the possibility that I could do this too. No longer working for someone else, but going back to what my Grandfather and those before him knew. I knew I would never reach my full potential with someone else calling the shots. As I grew it forced me out of my comfort zone. I found myself traveling and running into more and more Black-owned and operated businesses. God was truly trying to tell me something. But, I didn’t start listening until several years ago when I hit another fork in the road.

I had lost so much because of my ambition; I lost friends, strained relationships with my family, and lost love with the beautiful black men I loved along the way. I was labeled as a heartbreaker because I was career-driven, afraid that settling down meant clipping my wings and making me insignificant to myself. So I came off the road and changed my career. I fell back on my Accounting minor and took a 9 to 5, bought a house, and put down roots, or so I thought!

In my boredom, I started reading again. Everything concerning my culture, our real history, and the news…I have grown so tired of the put-downs of my brothers and sisters. I am so tired of seeing literature about how to get a man or I’m in love with a thug. So I started writing about what I knew; my family the men and women in my life. Then I started my own production company for audio and video. And I prayed (one prayer because a Supreme Being that could create a universe was not stupid enough that I had to keep praying the same prayer for HIM.) And then I went forward as if that prayer had been answered. I have always had a one-on-one with God and I have always WALKED ON FAITH. Without him and Faith I would have never had the confidence to do all that I have done!

But there was this one person that gave me a foundation that wouldn’t crack or fall, the one person that worked the land and introduced me to the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and all it could do, that one person that would lead me by example and had an oral history to tell that turned my eyes from normal to half dollars, SHE was MY Nana (grandmother).

Before I knew it, I had written a series of books that started at our roots. Nana - Grandmother and her family that believes in God first (Si is his name in Swahili) and family second. No, I didn’t write another slave book, it is set in modern times and I keep it real! And even though my work is presented as fiction, it is full of truths and that is why it is called “The Learning.”

You see it didn’t take me to see “The Black Panther” to know the truth of my history and take pride in my Blackness and respect my elders and listen and take their wisdom and make it my own. I had my NANA, she kept me woke, and thus I got my “Learning!”

I released the second book in the series. So you are the fortunate ones. You do not have to wait for the next book. (Don’t you hate that?) It continues with what happens next and it is “The Inevitable” When you know all there is to know and have been given the tools necessary to survive and make the moral decisions in life that we all face. It is time for you to take the reins because in every life there is “The Inevitable!”

As a result of writing these books, I have to be very careful about what I ask of my FATHER because he always gives me more, and that extra was Nana’s Jewelry Box. Because I loved playing with Nana’s jewelry, it molded my style, and I realized that I am not the only one. It is a woman’s delight to adorn herself and take pride in her appearance; this is so African of us.

Now I invite you to explore stories you could have never imagined and be sure to take a look inside my Nana’s Jewelry Box.

Thank you all for being here and for giving us new authors your attention.”