What does it take to write a book that’s completely, unflinchingly honest? For Robert Carney, it meant getting on his knees every morning at 5 a.m., asking God to help him set his ego aside, and writing like no one was ever going to read it.
The result is Unscarred: An Epic Fight to Heal My Wounds From Addiction, a memoir that moves from childhood trauma and street life in New York, through drug addiction, crime, and maximum security prison, to sobriety, entrepreneurship, and a life built one day at a time in Delray Beach, Florida.
Robert joined me this week on Jolene’s Book & Writers Talk, and I’ll be honest: this is one of those conversations that reminded me why I do this podcast.
He didn’t set out to be a writer. He dropped out in seventh grade, earned his GED behind bars, took an associate degree program while incarcerated, and kept a collection of short stories he’d written in prison. It was during COVID lockdown, watching someone he admired speak openly about childhood trauma on a Zoom meeting, that he found the courage to tell his own story.
“I describe myself as the three-legged bomb-sniffing dog out in the minefield,” he told me, “going: Don’t come this way. Go that way.”
That image says everything about who Robert is and why he wrote this book. Not for literary acclaim. Not for commercial gain. For the phone calls, the texts, the emails from readers who say it helped them.
He spent two years and four months writing Unscarred every single morning. He worked with a book coach through KN Literary Arts, learned the difference between narrative and dialogue, and self-published when the manuscript was ready. Now he’s doing podcasts, book signings at Barnes & Noble, and TV interviews back in Reno, where he built one of his moving companies and lived for fifteen years.
His next book, I’m Sober, Now What?, is already taking shape in his mind. It’s about the other transition—the one nobody warns you about, when you get sober and realize the person staring back at you is a complete stranger, even to the people who love you.
If you know someone navigating addiction, recovery, or the terrifying blank page of a new life, this episode is for them. If you’re a writer who thinks your story is too messy, too complicated, or too far outside the mainstream to matter, Robert Carney’s story is for you too.
Find Robert online and grab a copy of Unscarred below.
Listen & Connect:
Unscarred on Amazon (affiliate link)
Until next week, keep writing,
Jolene MacFadden
Host, Jolene’s Book & Writers Talk
