Welcome

I’m Damien “Toppnotch” Hodges, author of the “Blinded By The Lights: A Diamond In The Rough” trilogy series. I’m interested in networking to find innovative ways to gain exposure for my brand of Urban “Reality” writing as well as assistance with Post-conviction relief from this illegal sentence I’m confined to. It’s because of my position of incarceration that its relatively impossible to maintain an active marketing plan to maximize the potential of my novels or shed light on the injustice I’ve suffered and still endure.

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Blinded By The Lights: A Diamond In The Rough is a fictional story of two childhood friends that discover rap music is the way out of their environment of drug dealing and gang violence. Their rise to stardom comes with the pitfalls the music industry and fame provides. An in-depth look at every aspect of the music business and the toll it takes on the artists, along with the allure of sub­ coming to the street life. Their struggle and triumphs to overcome are uniquely documented as the try not to get Blinded by the Lights!

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With manipulation and deceit, Lingo and 360 is finally free from Boss Up Records. They survived club shootings, drug deals, and murder but that was only the beginning. Lingo is learning first hand just how shady the music business could be. From the outside looking in, they are living the life but it’s not what it seems. Aside from those issues within the business, 360 is also dealing with his own family business back in Chicago. With the police on their bumper, Lac and Deville conjures up a plan to try to shake them loose, but can they, or will they all be Blinded by the Fame?

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The prequel and final novel in the Blinded bythe Lights trilogy. The story of three brothers (Fleetwood, Deville and Lac) trying to find their identity in the midst of the Black Power movement of the 1960s in Chicago. After witnessing their mother die of a heroin overdose, Fleetwood and Deville took up with gangster named Rollin to raise them. Lac at the tender age of 13 followed in their dope fiend father's footsteps as a pimp prodigy. The lessons learned and the work they put in during the birth of the black organized crime developed their reputations that would shape their lives in the Cabrini Green projects for decades to come. On their rise to power. they were taught not to get . . . Blinded by the Game.