The mafia writer: How a man wrote his way out of a life of crime

Zoomin English

Alan Gunner Lindbloom grew up alongside the Detroit mafia and ended up with a 13-year prison sentence, but it was behind bars that he discovered his gift for writing. You'll never guess where he is now.

Transcript

00:00I'm inside of a garage bleeding out.

00:04I see blood dumping out of my stomach, pouring out.

00:07I ran right out of my shoes.

00:08I don't even remember that.

00:09This is one of the worst ghettos in Detroit, or even the world, and all I could think about

00:13was, man, I don't want my girl to get the phone call that my body was found dead, bleeding

00:18out in the hood.

00:19So I said, I'm going to live today.

00:20My name is Gunnar Allen Lindblom.

00:35At age 14, I was indoctrinated in the life of crime, organized crime, through my uncle

00:39and some members of my family.

00:44Nobody knew that.

00:45I didn't share with anyone, because I was told, never share anything outside of the

00:50family.

00:51Then we started selling drugs, and I got involved in my own drugs and bad habits and

00:59gambling.

01:00Eventually, I started doing armed robberies.

01:02I started doing bank robberies.

01:03At the very end, before I went to prison, I didn't care anymore.

01:06I wasn't getting signed off on, meaning I was a maverick.

01:09Nobody was giving me permission to do nothing.

01:10I was keeping all the money.

01:11So the family was like, you know what, we can't help you.

01:16I took 17 capital charges.

01:17All of them carried life.

01:18And in the end, I couldn't beat any of them.

01:21So I took a plea agreement, and that put me away for 13 to 15 years.

01:27So at that point, the game was over.

01:35So I get to prison.

01:36It was horrible, as everybody thinks.

01:37The worst part is the crazy people.

01:39You're in there with the worst of the worst.

01:43where I was my entire 13-year bit was where you have all the murderers and the rapists

01:47and the gangs.

02:01The interesting part is I knew I had this gift.

02:03I had these stories in my mind.

02:05I love reading, which is crazy.

02:07So I got to prison.

02:09I told myself, I'm not going to be another number.

02:12I'm going to walk out of here.

02:13I'm going to write these stories.

02:14I'm going to write these novels.

02:15There was a girl I went to school with.

02:20Never knew her.

02:21But she said, I work for a publisher.

02:22I see that you're a writer.

02:23Maybe I could help.

02:32She said, I was shocked when I read this book.

02:34Could not believe how well it was written.

02:40She started writing me through letters.

02:42We hadn't talked on a phone at all for a year.

02:45On literally a thousand pages of letters we wrote.

02:48But eventually she started to say, you know, this is, I feel more than friends here.

02:54We called it the painted line.

02:58We can't cross that line.

02:59I have seven years left in prison.

03:01You can't fall in love with me.

03:03But she did, and I fell in love with her.

03:07And then one day we just decided, let's get on the phone and talk, and she waited six

03:11years for me.

03:16And then the day that I got out, she was waiting there for me, and she had a big beautiful

03:27meal for me.

03:28And the next day, I married her.

03:29We were married.

03:30We went to the municipal building.

03:32My two friends were the witnesses.

03:34The funny part was, the clerk reading the vows, and my wife were pretty much, you know,

03:39a little teary-eyed.

03:40Me and my boys were like, ball.

03:45And then I published this book, To Be a King.

03:54And right away, within 72 hours, it cracked the top 100 in the world, peaking at 28.

04:01And everybody's saying the same thing, why is this not a movie yet?

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