Inspirations.

I wrote SKINLESS as an x-ray of survival and artistry—urgent, unfiltered—a raw look at trauma, resilience, and how we adapt to survive. Told through fractured timelines that speak from the heart of the other side—the now—it’s about navigating late-1990s New York City: sometimes behind a second persona, searching for comfort in after-hours haunts and the underground arts scene—and how art sometimes glues us back together.

It moves to the edge where trauma meets longing, where escape is found in song—songwriting as healing.

This edition goes more deeply into dissociation, into the visceral body, making song and words from our most honest places—and shows how we find light at the darkest edges of our minds and the city streets, amid race and class fault lines. This book is for anyone who searches for light, stays open to healing, and seeks to express the beauty within—and art only they can create.

Second Edition.

Over 100 pages longer—not for word count, but to give space to voices and scenes once too exposed. Original: ~79,000 words, 235 pages (6×9). New: ~80,000 words, 388 pages (5.5×8.5). The new page count reflects added material and a smaller trim size.

Why a Second Edition? After reclaiming rights to SKINLESS, I refined and expanded—more live-stage performance, deeper relationships with the vocal coach and music producer, and a clearer timeline. Most of all, how songwriting opens a pathway for healing, integrating self through an expression of what lives deep in the cells.

This edition sinks into hidden places and examines the humanity found there—sometimes only in a song no one else may ever even hear.

• More life on the page: Street poetry, nights by the East River, lyrics written for solace, East Village haunts, after-hours dives, eclectic clubs, boutique hotel rooms, fine-dining rooms, and diner corners only real New Yorkers know—a slice of NYC’s 1990s arts-and-underground history, much of it now gone.

• Deeper roots: Abandonment, addiction, the search for a father, and the shelter of an alter ego—Cindy—built to navigate class and power, even as it distances the truest art.

• True music: Scenes and lyrics from my stage life—the story behind the songs as I wrote my debut album, “Red Devil Trickery” (all later featured on my “Greatest Hits” EP)—with album recordings featuring New York City jazz and blues legends.

• This edition also adds a storyline with a legendary producer, a mercurial artist I tracked down to secure permission to portray.

• Sharper heat: Violence, drugs, loyalty and betrayal, love knotted with the hunger for protection—unflinching.

• Braided time: Past, present, and the uncertain now, seen through a beautiful healing survivor’s lens.

• Bolder lens: Race and class in a city that profits on performance and hides its scars behind wealth and masks.

Closing.

This isn’t a story polished for comfort; it’s a dedication to survival under neon, where love, loyalty, abuse, and abandonment spiral the rooms, while art mends what life keeps tearing apart.

SKINLESS, set to music from the other side of damage—on the growing side of diminished, a crescendo out of silence—is offered as light: to keep healing, to give voice to the unsayable, and to reach anyone still hiding in their shell.

In its fullest form, I offer SKINLESS: an expanded x-ray of survival; an exploration in story; music from inside, reaching for light.

I’m not much for goodbyes or hellos—simply, now. Stay on the growing side of diminished. ~MM