The prick reached the door, stuck somewhere in the middle of that endless hallway. You know what’s the worst part of all this? That I had no idea what came next. Nobody tells you anything. Nobody tells you where you’re going, what you’ll be doing there, when you’re coming back, when you’re allowed to take a shit. Nothing. You feel your way through every step in the dark, like a blind man in a house that isn’t his, without even a cane.

For security, they say. You’re not supposed to know or see anything extra. That’s also why you stand facing the wall at every single opportunity. Like I actually give a damn which key opens the break room fridge.

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Anyway. Back to my new cell. I stood there like an idiot - my hands weren’t cuffed anymore, they’d taken the shackles off once we got to the wing. I’ll tell you, that was a hell of a relief. The feeling of free hands, in prison, is basically the feeling of freedom itself. They take off the cuffs and suddenly you feel like you won the lottery. The messed up part is, in prison even winning looks like losing. Just a slightly smaller loss.

Right then I glanced beside the door. Little slips of paper hung there with names on them. If you had a cell to yourself, there was no slip. Mine had two. A wave of goosebumps went through me.

God, please don’t let it be gypsies or junkies, I begged in my head, and immediately felt sick that I’d even thought it. Then ten more variations of inmates I didn’t want ran through my mind, piling up by the second, until I landed on one simple conclusion: whoever’s in there, it’s a hundred percent going to be bad. All of this happened in about three seconds. The human brain moves surprisingly fast when it’s scared and has nothing else to do.

The prick opened the door, pointed for me to get in. A wave of stench hit me straight in the face - cigarette smoke mixed with farts and human sweaty stink, a combination no perfumer on earth ever prepared for. I was a nonsmoker. Told them that right at the start. Clearly didn’t give a shit. I wanted to die, right there, on the spot, no goodbyes. I waited for someone to explain the rules, some kind of order, anything at all.

“What are you staring at, dumbass? Get in there!” he barked.

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Like an obedient dog, I dropped my ears and slid inside. Drop your personality, Tomáš, I kept telling myself. It’s useless to you in here, it’ll just get in your way, like a tie nobody asked you to wear.

I wanted to ask about the phone, about food, about the stamps they’d taken, paper, a pen, books, when you’re supposed to wake up. About a hundred other things. But the prick shut the door - “shut” is too gentle a word for what happened. He slammed it with enough force that I nearly shit myself right there. Heavy, iron, old as sin.

You don’t control the lights yourself. When they come on and when they go off is up to the pricks. You can ask, but nine times out of ten nobody’s granting your request. Nothing to charge anyway, and in intake cells you’re not allowed to have anything -no radio, no TV, nothing. So the electricity’s useless to you regardless. The guards, meanwhile, loved slamming doors. It was their favorite hobby, their own little art form. There’s a small peephole in the door, which they open with a creak to look inside. They check like that every hour, to see who’s hanged themselves this time… over those four years I went through that eight times.

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Other than that, when the guards - pricks walk the hallway, they walk loud on purpose, so you hear them coming from a mile off. They’ve got a ring of a hundred keys on their belt jingling like a wind chime, announcing their arrival well in advance… which is fantastic news for the junkies, gives them plenty of time to hide their tools and their garbage. Pills, heroin, cocaine, speed, whatever’s on the menu that week. I figure they do it on purpose, because they can’t be bothered to deal with any of it. A junkie with drugs is a happy junkie, and a happy junkie doesn’t cause trouble.

You know what paperwork looks like when they actually find something? You know what kind of hassle that is for a prick? Some of these guys have trouble with writing as a general concept, so they’d rather not find anything at all.

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Right, back to the cell. I stood there with my backpack, full of whatever little they hadn’t confiscated. Some food, cigarettes, tobacco, of which I had barely any, just enough to have something resembling currency. Before checking in I’d read up online, learned that cigarettes and tobacco could buy you things you couldn’t normally have. Peace, for one. Unfortunately I didn’t have much. Rookie mistake. If I ever had to go back… which, thank God, I never will … I’d walk in with a backpack stuffed entirely with cigarettes and tobacco and nothing else.

The cell was square. Small. About twelve square meters. Five beds crammed in there - two bunks and one single. Rusted, the paint peeling off the frames like an old sunburn. Walls completely stripped of plaster, covered in drawings and writing. Holes here and there, like someone had been digging a tunnel through to the next cell. Maybe they had. The toilet sat right next to the beds, separated by nothing but a wall up to my shoulders. It stank, filthy. One sink, and a mirror that wasn’t a mirror, just a scratched sheet of metal you could sort of see yourself in, blurry, like through fog, like a ghost of your own former life. Two chairs, one little table in the middle. Bare poured concrete floor. Two windows facing the inner courtyard. Thick vertical bars on the outside, then a second layer of horizontal bars a little narrower, then a fine centimeter-wide steel mesh behind that.

Three layers total. I’d figured there’d be one. Later I found out that even with all that, inmates still managed to pass drugs through the windows. They’ve got it down to a science, I’ll tell you about it in a bit.

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I turned around and there were two “people” staring at me. One young kid, the other a top-shelf junkie. Top-shelf junkie, in practical terms, means: forty-six pounds soaking wet, three or four teeth, garbage tattoos, and a tremor like he’s got his own personal disco running nonstop inside him.

---

No good evening. No hi, no hey. First thing out of both their mouths:

“Got tobacco?”

“I don’t smoke.” I watched the disappointment cross their faces, but there was still a tiny spark of hope refusing to die, stubborn as a wolf.

“First time?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m on my fifth. My buddy’s on his fourth.” I thought, that doesn’t add up. The kid looked about nineteen - how the hell is he already on his fourth stint? The other guy, I believed instantly, no question.

They noticed my backpack was full. Neither of them had a bag, or belongings of any kind. Just hunger and hope.

“Got any food?”

Couldn’t lie about that, it was obvious I had something.

“Yeah, a little.”

Both of them jumped with joy, eyes glued to the backpack like it was a jewelry store window.

“They call me Miro,” the junkie said.

“I’m Karel.”

“Where you from?” the junkie asked.

I’ve read enough books in my life to know junkies and manipulators run a simple play - get close to the mark, then drain them dry. They look for a connection. Or invent one.

I decided to lie.

“Prague.”

“Me too, what part?”

“Chodov,” I lied.

“No way dude, me too!” Probably lied too. “Guess we’re practically brothers.” Warmth dripping off his voice, eyes locked on my bag like a hawk on a mouse.

“Where do you want to sleep? Top or bottom?” I understood I got to pick, based on how much I shared. So I shared. Didn’t have the nerve for a fight, and they’d have taken it while I slept anyway - not that I expected to sleep again for the next several years. For them, it was Christmas.

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Didn’t save a crumb for later. Wiped it all out in ten minutes flat, like locusts through a field. I had no appetite myself, which I regretted the very next day when they brought around the prison’s Michelin-starred menu - one star, awarded purely for the courage it takes to eat it.

“What else you got in there? Any cigarettes?”

They completely ignored what I’d told them two minutes earlier. Hoping a cigarette might materialize by miracle, like Santa Claus with COVID who couldn’t finish his deliveries in one night.

“Don’t have any. I don’t smoke.” They deflated, like kids just told Christmas got cancelled due to inflation.

“We’re in real bad shape. So bad, yesterday we smoked pistachio shells. You know, the ones from pistachios. Doesn’t really burn right, but we tried it. Tried a banana too. Dug through everything by the window, every butt we could find. Nothing left out there now. Hey - you got even a little tobacco? Or coffee?”

They’d already clocked the coffee, so I admitted it, like I was under interrogation.

“Could you give us some? If we send a cup up to the guy above us,” he pointed at the ceiling, “he’ll send us down one or two cigarettes. You’d be a legend. The biggest legend in the world. The absolute biggest legend.”

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“Okay,” I said. “But I sleep on the bottom bunk, and you tell me exactly how things work around here.” I was adapting at a speed I never expected of myself.

He enthusiastically agreed to become my lifelong prison mentor, and immediately ran to the window and started banging on the radiator pipes. Turned out to be a hell of a communication system, better signal than my phone ever had.

“Jula, you there, Jula? Jula!!! JULA!!!” he screamed loud enough for the whole block to hear.

A voice came back from above after a moment.

“What, asshole, I’m sleeping.”

“You still want coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, we got a new guy, real legend. Got coffee. I’ll send it up, you send down four smokes, deal?”

“Two, only.”

“Fine, asshole, better than nothing.”

“Send the string down.”

Another window chimed in from somewhere: “Who’s got coffee? Which window?” Like a stock exchange floor, except instead of shares it’s coffee and cigarettes, and instead of brokers it’s junkies with three teeth apiece.

“Jula, for fuck’s sake, send the smokes or the tobacco right away, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He pulled it up. I found myself wondering how exactly the guy upstairs was going to drink that coffee. My freshly appointed junkie prison mentor explained the recipe, one that would fail every health inspection ever written: every morning, for ten minutes, they run the hot water tap, and if you time it right, the water hits about forty, fifty degrees, which tints the color and vaguely suggests the flavor of coffee. Vaguely. Not coffee, but something coffee-adjacent, the same way a spare tire is something tire-adjacent. Old-timers like him, he told me, have zero issues with hot water - which he proved to me personally the very next day.

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He generously promised that if I gave him coffee now too, he’d make me a coffee tomorrow like the best hotel in Prague. I agreed, having absolutely no idea what I was walking into. Didn’t know he’d set fire to a white bedsheet - “because it doesn’t smoke as much” - hang a plastic bottle of water above it, and heat the water with a burning torch made of bedding until it got properly hot, or until the plastic bottle started melting, whichever came first. That gets you water at a solid sixty-five degrees, and the real experts push it all the way to eighty.

The whole process takes about twenty minutes, fills the place with smoke, and risks getting you thrown in solitary for destroying prison property and endangering everyone with fire - plus you could walk away with two extra months tacked onto your sentence. Is the coffee worth it?

But back to the window. The string went up. A moment later it came back down, wrapped around a small pinch of tobacco. The junkie looked at me with a smile that was missing teeth in exactly the spots where the joy should’ve been. “Best Christmas ever, man!” And off they went to roll cigarettes in plain paper, since neither of them had actual rolling papers.

Best Christmas ever. I sighed.

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“Peter in your novel acts exactly like my older brother!”

Why should a comment like that make you proud? Because above all else, the characters in your story must feel undeniably real.

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You can have a brilliant core premise, a world-class cover design, and a masterfully constructed plot, but the story will only ever breathe through the people living inside it. Just like the neighbors in your apartment building or the strangers on the street, characters in literature provoke strong reactions. Some are broken and sad; others are vibrant and kind; some are downright abrasive.

The Two Halves: The Internal Biography vs. The Outer World

Every three-dimensional character consists of two interwoven dimensions: the inside and the outside.

1. The Internal Biography (The Foundation)

This is everything that shaped the character before the first scene of your manuscript takes place. It is their lived experience: where they grew up, how they were treated by their parents, their personal losses, and the scars left behind by past failures. You must be able to write the biography of each major character from their birth up to the precise moment your story begins. Sitting down to write out this personal history isn’t a waste of time; it is the single best way to understand the underlying roots of their behavior.

2. The Outer World (The Three Spheres of Life)

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While the internal biography is the foundation, the outer world is where the story actually happens. A complete human being moves through three distinct spheres of existence:

• The Professional Level: How does your character make a living? Do they work from home, sit in a corporate cubicle, work on a factory line, or provide a service on the road? Are they thriving, desperately struggling, completely burned out, or barely getting by? How much money do they earn? Who are their colleagues, what is the office dynamic like, and how do they handle daily workplace friction?

• The Social Level: Who is your character when surrounded by others? What are their relationships like with their partner, their close friends, their family, or complete strangers? Are they quiet and observant, or do they dominate the conversation out of hidden insecurity?

• The Private Level: What happens when the front door clicks shut and your character is entirely alone? What are their private traditions, weird late-night habits, nervous tics, and unspoken needs?

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“Right,” the guard barked. “Stop.”

I stopped. My hands hurt. I was sweating. The bag was heavy. Oh… and I forgot to mention the important part… my hands were cuffed. Carrying luggage with cuffed hands is an art nobody prepares you for.

I stepped back two paces, polite, giving him room to open the door. To where? No idea.

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He turned to me.

“Listen up, you Christmas piece of shit.” He said it pretty pissed off. “Turn around.”

I turned around. Looked down the hallway behind me.

“You imbecile. Face the wall.” He grabbed me and shoved me into the wall. Only now did I get it… I was supposed to stand right behind him, but facing the wall, nose ideally two centimeters from the plaster. Later I’d learn this was standard prison procedure. They don’t want you seeing what they do, where they go, which key opens what. Like I gave a damn.

I stared at that wall and wondered why the hell I hadn’t run. I’d turned myself in. Voluntarily. Got a letter… report within two weeks or they come get you. Who? A tactical team with twenty helicopters and a SWAT unit, like in the movies? Who knows. But I believed it, so I showed up. Before that I’d made a few calls to the prosecutor’s office, begging - it’s Christmas, for God’s sake, I just want one last Christmas and New Year’s with my parents, because for the next four years there’s no Christmas, no New Year’s, no family, nothing. The officials laughed at me. Hung up. One after another. That’s the moment I should’ve run. Somewhere to Belize.

Two years later my unit supervisor mentioned, just in passing, that I’d checked in early for nothing - I actually had until after New Year’s, because I’d called some official. I nearly had a stroke right there. But whatever. Early in, early out, right?

So I stood there. Before that prick in uniform opened the door, he went inside and started chatting with the other pricks. Laughing together. All of them, pricks. Taking their sweet time. Sure - it was Christmas, the pricks were stuck at work, and the rat outside could wait. Fifteen minutes, maybe more, I stood there staring at the wall, forehead nearly pressed against the plaster. They laughed. Laughed harder. Laughed and laughed. And in my head I was crying, like some abused little whore.

By the way - right around then I had the urge to reach into my pocket and check Instagram, or at least my email. Right. I wouldn’t see a phone again for four years. Strange, how you can stand up straight, stare at a wall, no phone, and survive fifteen minutes like that (probably fifteen). Hadn’t managed that in a long time. Try it sometime. It opens something up in your head.

He motioned for me to put the bag up. Dumped everything out of it again. Took my stamps, some food, my ID, my wallet, paper, pens, books. That’s when I was crying the hardest, inside. Tearing my hair out, stabbing myself with an imaginary knife. What the hell was I going to do without paper, a pen, books, stamps? The pricks laughed, said I’d get it later. But it was the holidays. What was “later”? Two weeks? Three? How was I supposed to reach my family without stamps? No phone!

Panic set in. But the pricks - and the prickette - just laughed at that. It made their day.

Only upside: when they handed the bag back, it was a lot lighter.

“Out!” one of them yelled.

“Hey, I’m gonna take this bitch, then coffee?”

I could’ve used a coffee too. Was looking forward to making one in my cell. Didn’t know I wouldn’t get a decent cup for two more months. Reason? Coffee, sure. Hot water, no. But that’s a story for later.

He led me to another room. Told me to strip naked and put everything into a beautifully scented - sarcasm, obviously - backpack, previously owned, apparently, by some Prague street entrepreneur. Meaning: a homeless guy.

It was cold. I stood on a rubber mat, completely naked. Okay - I had socks on. It was cold. I stood there for almost twenty minutes. In that cold. Or maybe forty. Or maybe just ten.

You know what’s the worst part of prison, especially at the start? No clock. You have no idea what time it is. There are no clocks anywhere. You have to guess. Sometimes I’d count in my head just to get a sense of how much time had passed. Not having a clock might be the worst punishment there is. Seriously. You want the hours to pass, but you’re scared it’s only been minutes. And with that comes a kind of fog. When you don’t know the time, your whole rhythm goes to hell. Try it sometime - not knowing what time it is. It’s a real punishment. Nobody experiences that these days, except maybe someone buried alive without a watch. Or an inmate. It’s torture, plain and simple.

The prick opened the door. Looked at me like he was checking if this piece of meat was fit for sale.

Pointed at my socks.

“You deaf, man? Naked. Socks off too.” He looked genuinely pissed.

I took them off, put them in the bag. He shut the door.

He pulled on gloves. Blue, medical. In that moment I had some seriously mixed feelings. Nowhere to run.

“Turn around,” he said. And fuck, here it comes. I’m losing my virginity right here, I thought, and slowly started making peace with it. Thought about where I’d be sleeping tonight, once this was over.

“Three squats,” he barked. Strange, but right then I wondered what my family was doing. Right now. This exact moment.

Classic… did the first squat. He said go deeper, said he wanted it to “fall out” of me. I asked what, but it was probably rhetorical. Prison guard pricks… present company excluded, ha - aren’t exactly known for their wit, just so you know.

The other squats must’ve been fine, because he shut up.

He bent down. The prick was now staring at my prick, and it happened, for the first time in my life. First time in my life a man ever touched me there. Lifted it up, and for a second I thought he was going to blow me. But no - he just lifted it, to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything. Later I learned that spot was a favorite stash location for a few of the prison’s “engineers.” Right between the shaft and the balls.

Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Three weeks earlier I was walking around in a suit, dead certain my lawyer - who, incidentally, also happens to represent Andrej Babiš, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and one of the richest men on earth … would save me from all this. He didn’t. Sure, I wasn’t paying Babiš rates, but the guy still cost a fortune. And now I’ve got some stranger’s face ten centimeters from my dick. Honestly, I felt bad for him. Staring at other men’s dicks all day must be a shit job, unless you’re a top-tier whore… or, politically correct term, a professional in the entertainment industry.

Suddenly I got his frustration, his anger. Felt sorry for the guy. Who knows how long the poor bastard’s been doing this. Still a prick, though.

After I’d performed a few more magic tricks and gymnastics - including a thorough retraction of my foreskin, just to confirm I wasn’t smuggling five bags of heroin up there too - he tossed me some clothes to put on.

Too small. Or too big. Never quite right.

“Don’t have anything else. You’ll trade later. Just get in it, for fuck’s sake.”

“Can I keep my own underwear?” I reached for it.

I took the government-issue underwear. Pulled it on, and even though it scratched like sandpaper, I didn’t show it. Everything chafed, everything was torn, everything smelled like some disgusting chemical powder. Didn’t worry about the stains - figured they were just a fashion statement at this point. Later I learned the real hotshots in prison prided themselves on always having new clothes - still holding their color, no stains, actually fitting. A few packs of tobacco to the guy in the laundry room, and you could have that too. But that came months later.

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The prick watched me, made it clear I should be moving faster.

“Out, and face the wall.” Naturally. I was starting to get used to it.

“Forward,” he said.

I walked. Didn’t ask a thing.

We went around the elevator, took the stairs instead. That damn keyring, must’ve had a million keys on it, kept jingling like a set of cursed bells. The place stank of cheap chemical cleaner, probably whatever they mopped the floors with. Inmates aren’t allowed to use elevators, so I walked up to the fourth floor on foot, the guard trailing behind me. He had to unlock door after door, every one of them creaking, and he slammed each one shut like he was trying to break it.

“Could I make a call?” The laugh that burst out of him carried down the whole corridor, lined with doors on both sides. “Once you’re in your cell,” he said. And with that, my mood actually lifted a little. I looked forward to calling home, letting them know that besides a brand-new experience with a grown man’s hands, I was doing fine.

Of course, turned out that was just the prick’s little joke. No phone for almost another month. But I didn’t know that yet. If I had, I would’ve killed myself with the first thing I could get my hands on.

We walked into some kind of corridor. Picture a hallway. A window at the far end. Doors along both sides, spaced about two meters apart. Heavy, steel. Around sixty of them. A long hallway, nothing but doors with small, shut little windows. And in a few minutes, one of them was going to close behind me too. For four years.

God, I hope I’m alone in there.

I wasn’t.

“Ruzyně.”

He grinned like he’d just invented the joke of the century. “Airport, or the slammer?” Fair guess - a guy with two stuffed backpacks in the back seat, looking like he’s off to catch a flight somewhere warm.

“The second one.” I didn’t smile. Not even a little.

It was warm in the cab, the heater wheezing under the dash like an old man with asthma, and outside the snow was falling. Two days after Christmas - the kind of stretch where you’re supposed to be home, stuffing your face with cookies and hating your relatives, not riding in this direction.

“Wait, seriously?” I nodded. “Jesus.” He rubbed his eyes like he was hoping I’d be gone when he opened them again. “How long?”

“Four years.”

Silence. Just the wipers doing their wet little chew-chew across the glass and the tires hissing through the slush.

The rest of the ride was quiet, like a funeral procession that doesn’t know yet who it’s burying. I stared out the window and tried to load everything into myself - the neon of the gas stations, the wet trees, a girl with an umbrella at the bus stop who had no idea how much she was worth just by standing there waiting for a tram instead of a release date. I wanted to stuff it all into my skull like a pantry before a war. I knew I’d be living off it for a long time.

“They send you in now, over New Year’s, right in the middle of the holidays?” He wasn’t really asking. “Bunch of assholes.” He said it almost fondly, the way you’d talk about a mother-in-law you secretly liked.

“Don’t remind me,” I said, still looking out the window, like there was one last show playing out there that I’d ever get to see. Turns out there was.

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Outside the gate it looked like a scene from a movie nobody wanted to direct. Inmates were coming back from work - from the bakery, though I had no idea yet that in a few months I’d be up to my elbows in dough in that same oven, laughing at how absurd fate can be. They looked like someone had run them through the wash on too long a cycle. Some of them were funny. Some looked like gangsters out of the nineties. Some looked like starved wolves after a hunger strike. The dregs of society, as some guy at the pub who’s never been within a mile of any of this would say.

And me - clean pants, two overstuffed bags, looking like a lost insurance salesman who wrote down the wrong address. I was a joke to them. And fair enough, they weren’t wrong.

“How much’d you get?” one of them asked.

“Four years.”

“Damn, man,” another one spat, like I’d just won a lottery nobody wants to win.

“I’ve been here three already,” a third one called out, proud, like he was showing off a medal.

“I’m about done, wouldn’t want to be starting like you, man,” grinned a fourth, with that particular pleasure people get watching somebody else step into the same shit they’ve already been wading through.

A buzzer went off, and a voice crackled out of the speaker, flat and full of contempt like an open-handed slap: “Assholes, inside. The new one stays out. He goes after them.”

They laughed, the way a crowd laughs at a soccer match. One of them passed by and gave me a little nod. “It’s alright here, man, you’ll make it... good luck.” It landed like finding a coin in a gutter - unexpected and stupidly touching.

They went through a big purple door, the kind of door designed by someone who hated color and people in equal measure. It slammed shut with a sound that went straight through my stomach, the way it does when someone slams your future shut in front of you.

Next to me hung a bulletin board - statutes, regulations, and right in the middle, proudly displayed: a recruitment poster for guards, 100,000 crowns signing bonus. I stood there wondering if they’d pay me better to switch sides of the bars. I tried not to think past the next hour. Tomorrow was as far away as Mars. Even the question of where I’d sleep that night was too big a bite to swallow.

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A few minutes later a green light clicked on, like someone wishing me a pleasant trip to hell.

I stepped inside. A room straight out of cheap sci-fi - a scanner, a metal table, fluorescent lights buzzing in that frequency that gets into your teeth. A young cop, a good ten years younger than me, who looked like he’d never once successfully tied a necktie, jerked his chin toward the table. I didn’t get it.

“Put your stuff up, man, what don’t you get, dumbass?”

I stood there feeling like a statue of my former decency. My whole life I’d used formal address and been addressed the same way back. I wore suits, paid my bills, dealt with people who could at least fake some respect. I ended up here over a business case - I’ll tell you about it another time, it involves two fairly well-known Hollywood stars who won’t be thrilled when I finally let that one out. And now this kid was talking to me like I was gum he’d found stuck to his shoe.

He dumped my backpack out onto the table like he was sorting garbage. Food went straight in the trash, no questions asked. “Can’t have this. Can have that. Can’t have this either.” It took fifteen minutes for him to sort my entire previous life into piles of allowed and forbidden junk.

Then he pointed at the scanner, then my belt, then my shoes. I took them off. Then my socks. I stood barefoot on concrete that was cold as a morgue slab, felt that cold licking up from my feet all the way to my ankles. He bent down with the wand and ran it over my body - and when he got between my legs, he jammed it up hard enough that I grunted. “Oops, sorry man, slipped.” He grinned while he did it, like a kid who’d just done something forbidden for the first time and discovered he liked it.

And then came the cherry on top. “Strip.”

Naked, arms at my sides, mouth dry as the Sahara. “Do three squats.” I went down, deep, deep enough that my balls nearly scraped the floor, so he could satisfy himself I hadn’t stashed anything up there. I groaned, half pain, half humiliation, and in that moment I wanted to hit him harder than I’d ever wanted to hit anyone in my entire life — business partners included. Instead I just crouched there, naked, thinking about how absurd the whole scene must look from above, from a bird’s-eye view. A grown man squatting, stripped bare, in front of a kid with a metal detector, in the middle of December.

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I packed my bags back up, torn open and scattered like the aftermath of a burglary committed by someone with no taste. Put my shoes back on. And because I was still about ninety percent my old self, I politely held the door and let him go through first.

He spun around like I’d just propositioned him. “You out of your mind?”

I had no idea what he meant. It was only much later I learned the first commandment of prison: you never walk behind a guard. You always walk in front of him. So he can keep his eyes on you, like a dog on a leash - minus the leash.

So I walked ahead, into a hallway stretching off into gray, no idea where it led. Probably to get issued my uniform. Then maybe to a cell.

"Left!" the one leading me barked, and I went where he pointed, because at that point I didn't exactly have opinions about direction. After a while he turned, looked at me the way a butcher looks at a piece of meat that's still breathing, and dropped: "We're gonna mess your hands up a little, Christmas miracle." Nothing else. No explanation. I just kept walking and waited to find out what exactly he meant by that.

Christmas was two days behind me. Back home, people were stuffed with carp and hopeful garbage about the new year.

The last cop, the one who took my prints, looked at me the way a butcher looks at a cut of meat he just noticed is past its date. Something clicked for him. He smiled the way people smile when they’re about to stick the knife in and want to watch your face while they do it.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

He let it hang there, like a pro.

“And Happy New Year, motherfucker.”

He walked off. Calm, satisfied, like he’d just wished me well at an office party. No tree, no presents, no sugar. Just that. And I’ll admit - it was more honest than most well-wishes I ever got from people who spent their whole lives calling me “sir.”

Then another cop, took me away, alongside with my black fingers.

As we walked down the corridor, there was nothing to hear but two sounds - inmates screaming from the windows outside, and the keys hanging off the belt of that Christmas dickhead leading me, God knows where.

It hit me fully right there, in the middle of that hallway - my sleep, my footsteps, every breath in and out now belonged to somebody else. And it was going to stay that way for a good long while.

I kept walking, my head full of noise, praying to a god I hadn’t much believed in until then, for one small thing - that tonight, on that cell, I’d be alone. I didn’t know God yet, not really. I’d meet him a few hours later, and it wasn’t the kind of introduction you’d expect.

Christmas was two days behind me. Back home, people were stuffed with carp and hopeful garbage about the new year.

To unlock the complete Character Framework, the 4-Point Scene Stress-Test, and the Choreography Blueprint, upgrade to a paid subscription below.

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“I wish you good health...” “Stay healthy!” “Cheers, to your health!”

I would bet good money you hear these exact phrases every single week. More than that, I bet you say them yourself without even thinking. They have become automatic social filler, polite greetings we throw around at birthdays and toasts. But strip away the politeness for a moment. When you look beneath the surface, your physical vitality and mental resilience dictate almost every single decision, feeling, and ambition you have.

Health is the engine of vital energy.

When your tank is full, your appetite for life explodes. You tackle major goals, make bold moves, and handle friction with ease. You can spot high-energy people the second they walk into a room… their presence is magnetic, not because they are performing, but because their internal engine is firing on all cylinders. My collaborator Dr. John Demartini often points out that our vital energy expands in direct proportion to the size and clarity of our vision. I agree completely, but I take it one step further: your vision can only go as far as your body can carry it. When your physical or mental health collapses, your grand vision shrinks overnight down to a single, desperate thought: I just want to stop feeling like crap.

Energy is directly tied to total health… both physical and mental. You cannot divorce the two.

A high-performing athlete with a shattered mindset will choke under pressure every time, no matter how strong their cardiovascular base is. Conversely, someone with brilliant mental fortitude will eventually burn out if their body is running on terrible fuel, poor sleep, and zero movement.

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But I’m not here to coddle you.

I ran two publishing houses for over 15 years, and I am here to tell you that in 2026, the era of formulaic, robotic character development is dead. Readers can smell the lack of sweat and lived experience from miles away. They demand a human pulse. And if you don’t know how to put it there, you’re just wasting your ink.

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Below is the brutal manual I used to hand to authors who wanted to break through. It’s not a polite tutorial. It’s the raw, unvarnished physics of how to build characters that strike and conflict, that move and breathe. It’s what I learned running publishing spreadsheets and it’s what I live today driving my van across Prague.

If you want to keep writing background noise, stop here. But if you’re ready to stop asking for permission and start writing freedom, then pull up a chair. Let’s get to work.

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Do you remember the story of Chuck Noland in Cast Away… or the classic tale of Robinson Crusoe? When isolated from human contact for too long, the mind begins to unravel. The solitude becomes so overwhelming that Chuck had to turn a volleyball named Wilson into his only conversational companion just to stay sane.

Relationships are, among other things, the most critical cornerstone of human existence for this very reason. Beyond sheer survival, they shape our need for love, connection, and social standing.

Relationships are the true connective tissue of our lives, but they must hold real value. For our relationships to be supportive, energizing, and meaningful, we have to actively work on them every single day. We must consistently invest in our connections with family, friends, partners, and, above all, ourselves.

Imagine having such broken connections around you that people actively avoid your company. It drains you, creates friction, and generates negative energy that you inevitably project back onto everyone else…destroying what remains of your circle.

And that internal dialogue bleeds directly into how you show up with others. Imagine sitting down for coffee with someone who spends the entire hour whining about how impossible their life is and what a loser they are. You would want to get up and leave within ten minutes. Listening to non-stop complaining is exhausting. Subconsciously, we crave being around people who energize us, not those who siphon our energy away.

How we speak to ourselves matters immensely. In professional terms, we are constantly running affirmations. Some people default to destructive internal scripts, while fulfilled people practice constructive self-talk.

The real question is: what are you feeding your own mind?

You can find out simply by observing your thoughts for a single day and writing them down. Self-talk is a discipline that everyone needs to master, because every external relationship is built directly on top of the relationship you have with yourself. If you neglect this foundation, self-destructive noise… fed by modern media and constant external pressure… will quickly take over. The daily framework I outline in the Harmonic Decalogue breaks down the exact daily practices required to master this area.

At the end of the day, your internal monologue dictates your entire attitude. How you speak to yourself determines how you approach the world. A person carrying an authentic, positive attitude consistently outbuilds and outlasts someone trapped in chronic negativity. They feel better, adapt faster, bring humor to hard moments, and naturally attract genuine people and strong opportunities.

Your attitude toward yourself dictates how you experience reality, which directly influences how others perceive you. Who would you rather spend an afternoon with…someone constantly radiating resentment, or someone anchored in constructive energy?

Beyond mindset, relationships in the physical world are governed by one primary vehicle: communication.

Every single day, we interact with people. Whether it’s a brief courtesy exchange at a counter or a high-stakes negotiation, we are communicating. And communication is never just the spoken word… it is driven heavily by body language and presence.

The health of your relationships with your partner, your family, or your colleagues depends almost entirely on how you communicate. When communication is grounded in mutual understanding, relationships thrive. When it’s built on friction, unresolved assumptions, and reactive outbursts, relationships collapse.

Quality communication generates positive momentum. Yet, far too many people operate their communication on total autopilot. They say whatever pops into their head the second an emotion hits them. They wear this impulsiveness as a badge of honor, claiming, “I’m just being totally honest.”

We need to be deliberate about what we say, when we say it, and how we deliver it. Most spontaneous outbursts aren’t authentic truth…they are just passing emotional weather. I am certainly not telling you to hide your heart or lie. I am urging you to think before you speak: Is this the right moment? Will this build understanding, or will it only cause unnecessary destruction?

How you say something matters just as much as what you say. A simple word like “hello” can sound warm and inviting, or cold and dismissive depending entirely on tone.

Non-verbal communication speaks louder than words. The way you walk into a room, your facial expressions, your eye contact, and how you hold yourself carry immense weight. Many people obsess over their exact wording while completely ignoring the body language that betrays them. You are always broadcasting both simultaneously.

Back during my career in direct sales and network business, a man approached me asking for help with his product presentations. He memorized every technical detail and feature of the company’s catalog. I agreed to sit in on one of his live sales pitches to evaluate his performance.

Before we went in, Martin told me that his past failures were simply because he hadn’t known the product line well enough. Now that he had every fact memorized, he was convinced the orders would come pouring in.

Then he began to speak.

It was like watching a robot read from a manual. No gestures, no emotional engagement, no eye contact, and zero connection with the room. He rattled off technical advantages like a machine programmed to deliver a script. His mind was so trapped in memorizing data that his physical presence felt completely hollow…. he wasn’t being a real human being, and the audience felt it instantly.

How many sales did he close that day? Exactly zero.

After the room cleared, he shook his head in frustration and immediately started blaming the product, the market, and the audience. But the product wasn’t the problem, and neither were the people in the chairs. The breakdown was entirely his delivery and rigid posture.

When I broke down the replay for him and showed him what his presence actually looked like from the outside, he saw the truth. He realized he was only focusing on the words, completely ignoring the human connection behind them. We worked on his body language, his presence, and how to speak with genuine conviction. Once he shifted that delivery, his orders began rolling in and his business took off.

Non-verbal communication is just as vital as spoken language. Both forces shape every single interaction you will ever have… whether one-on-one or in front of an entire team.

Building real, lasting relationships requires deliberate daily habits, and mastering both your inner dialogue and your external communication is where that journey begins.

Coming up next: Part 2 is all about HEALTH… the physical foundation that keeps your mind sharp and your ambition alive when the pressure hits.

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• Drop a comment below: What’s the hardest habit you’ve had to break in your daily self-talk?

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We sit down, and suddenly we feel completely lost, drained of ideas, exhausted, or just terrified. We ask ourselves questions that creep in like slow poison:

• Will anyone ever actually read this?

• Does this plot make any sense at all?

• Did I mess up somewhere in the previous chapter?

• Is this conflict dramatic enough to hold attention?

• Will this scene land with the emotional impact I imagine?

• Is this character believable and trustworthy?

And dozens of other toxic questions that poison a writer’s mind. Left unchecked, they can completely paralyze you… discouraging you from putting words on the page for days, weeks, months, or in the worst cases, forever.

Not getting these inner doubts under control is dangerous to your creative life. But here is the truth: most of what you call “laziness” isn’t laziness at all. It is fear disguised as procrastination.

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Once you understand how to confront these mental traps, you can dismantle resistance automatically. Here is how to do it.

1. Confrontation: Call the Fear by Its Real Name

As soon as those toxic questions begin to whisper in your mind, confront them head-on. Do not run away from them, and do not let them dictate your day.

• What if someone dislikes your book? Not everyone likes books by Dan Brown, Jack Canfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or J.K. Rowling. Take a look at the 1-star reviews of your absolute favorite classic novel… they are full of people tearing it apart. Did criticism stop those authors from writing? Absolutely not.

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Improving your writing isn´t some mystical secret. It comes down to direct rules, daily habits, and understanding how a reader’s mind actually works. Whether you’re working on educational non-fiction or building a fictional world, these are the principles I live by and you should too.

If you’re finding this series helpful on your journey to finishing your book, hit the Subscribe button below so you don’t miss the next chapters!

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Non-Fiction and Educational Literature

• Write in short sentences
  Ask yourself: What books do you enjoy reading the most, actually? It’s never the ones filled with dense, unending walls of text. It’s the books with short, concise sentences, punchy paragraphs, and room to breathe. When a page is organized, reading feels effortless.

• Divide your book into chapters
  Break your book down. A single chapter can easily have 10, 15, or even 20 smaller sections with clear, descriptive subheadings. Look at the books of Brian Tracy or Randy Gage. When you structure a book like a series of focused, high-impact articles, the reader digests the material with excitement and retains the knowledge far better.

• Write constantly to protect your energy
  If you abandon a manuscript for months and then try to return to it, the original momentum is gone. The reader can immediately feel that shift in energy, and the text becomes disjointed. When you write consistently, your voice stays sharp, cohesive, and confident.

• Add a clear summary at the end of each chapter
  A chapter summary is pure gold. It allows your reader to refresh the key points in 30 seconds. A concise recap gives the reader a reason to use your book as a permanent reference guide.

• Stop leaving blank pages
  Have you ever actually used those empty lines at the back of a non-fiction book to take notes? Me? Never. Blank note pages are just filler used to artificially pad a book’s thickness. Serious readers take notes in their own journals, on their phones, or in the margins. Don’t lower the perceived quality of your book with unnecessary empty space.

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Fiction and Storytelling

• Engage all five physical senses
  Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Don’t just tell me that coffee is being made… let me smell the roast, hear the hiss of the steam, and feel the heat radiating off the mug. When you trigger the reader’s physical senses, you turn passive reading into an immersive experience.

• Create believable, flawed characters

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„Tak jo, podívej se na to,“ mumlal Stránský, zatímco si hřbetem ruky utíral z čela mastnou šmouhu od motorového oleje. „Není to petržel. To vidí i slepej. Ale hele, je to zelené? Je. Je to rostlina? Je. Všichni v čechách znají koprovku, takže se z toho může i vařit. Není to kytka - ale skoro-petržel. A Lucka dost možná vaří nějakou staročeskou polívku, kde se ten kopr ztratí, nebo si toho prostě nikdo nevšimne. Zahrajeme to na totální debily. Když bude naštvaná, nahodíš ten svůj obličej ublíženého umělce, řekneme, že kluci na ranní rampě jsou funkčně negramotní idioti, a ať si to pak zákaznická podpora po telefonu vyřeší sama. Dostane nějaké kredity a bude klid.“

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Najednou se ale zastavil. Jeho drsný výraz ještě víc zkamenněl. Otočil se, chytil Adama oběma rukama za předek jeho mikiny a přitáhl si ho tak blízko, že Adam cítil pach levných cigaret a silné ranní kávy z automatu. Podíval se mu přímo do očí.

„Ale tohle se ode mě opovovaž učit! Slyšíš mě, ty literáte? Tohle je totální, absolutní, životní výjimka, protože máme historické, katastrofální zpoždění a dispečink už si nabíjí pistole, proto aby mě postavili ke stěně jak vojnovýho zrádce a zastřelili jak toho Toma Cruise v tom filmu Valkýra rozumíš mi? Každá vteřina je jako kulka do mojí výplaty! Tohle se v ostrém provozu nesmí, Adame! Jestli tohle jednou uděláš na své vlastní trase, až dostaneš auto, systém tě spolkne zaživa, vyplivne tě jako řidiče pro doručování zasraných polských matrací a tvoje hodnocení klesne hlouběji než kariéra Harwieho Weinsteina! Rozumíš mi?!“

Adam rychle zamrkal. V hlavě se mu okamžitě rozjela divoká argumentace o tom, že on sám kopr vyloženě nenávidí, protože mu připomíná školní jídelnu a trauma z dětství, a že by možná bylo lepší skočit do nejbližší večerky pro novou petržel. Odevzdaně se nadechl, otevřel pusu, že to všechno Stránskému navrhne—

„Výborně. Vidím, že si rozumíme,“ přerušil ho Stránský, pustil jeho mikinu a ukázal na sedadlo řidiče staré Caddy. „Teď, abychom urychlili celý tenhle školicí proces a udělali z tebe chlapa, řídíš ty.“

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Adam doslova ztuhl v pohybu. Jedna noha mu zůstala viset ve vzduchu. Oči se mu rozšířily do velikosti QR kódů na taškách. V duchu začal okamžitě křičet: „Cože? Já? Vždyť jsem naposledy řídil před pár lety Need for Speed u kamaráda na playstationu! V pražském provozu s tímhle naloženým tankem nepřežiju ani pět metrů!“

Chtěl to říct nahlas, už ze sebe mačkal první slovo—

„Perfektní, to beru jako vaše nadšené a profesionální ano!“ štěkl Stránský, bez varování mu plácl do dlaně těžký svazek klíčů od auta a surově ho strčil směrem k sedadlu řidiče. „Nasedej, pohni kostrou, seřiď si zrcátka a hlavně nesahej na rádio. Levý reproduktor je uvolněný, vrčí to a pokaždé, když trefíme pražskou díru, vydává zvuk jako podřezávané podsvinče. Jedeme, směr Vinohrady. A těch svítících kontrolek si nevšímej - to je jen dekorace.”

O deset minut později prožíval Adam svou vlastní, soukromou verzi řidičského pekla. Manuální převodovka staré Caddy měla tuhou spojku, auto bylo těžké kvůli dvaceti nákupům vzadu a Stránského praktické rady byly jako psychologický teror. Navíc bylo při každé zákrutě slyšet jak se hýbou a posouvají i tašky v nákladovém prostoru a to bylo nemilé, protože každý pohyb tašek mohl znamenat riziko poškození zboží což by znamenalo, že by to Adam musel platit ze svého. A toho svého nebylo moc - vlastně nic.

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☕ Buy Me a Coffee

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“Alright, look at it,” Stránský muttered, wiping a greasy smudge of engine oil off his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s not parsley. A blind man could see that. But hey, is it green? Yes. Is it a plant? Yes. Everyone in this country knows dill sauce, so you can definitely cook with it. It’s not just a weed - it’s near-parsley. And Lucka is probably making some old-fashioned Bohemian soup where the dill will just blend right in, or nobody will notice at all. We’ll play completely dumb. If she gets pissed, you put on that hurt-artist face of yours, we’ll say the guys on the morning ramp are functionally illiterate idiots, and let customer support sort it out over the phone. She’ll get some store credit and that’ll be that.”

Suddenly, he stopped dead. His rugged expression hardened even further. He spun around, grabbed Adam with both hands by the front of his hoodie, and pulled him in so close that Adam could smell the stench of cheap cigarettes and strong morning coffee from the vending machine. He locked eyes with him.

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“Don’t you dare learn this from me, though! You hear me, Shakespeare? This is a total, absolute, once-in-a-lifetime exception because we are on a historic, catastrophic delay, and dispatch is already loading their pistols to line me up against the wall like a wartime traitor and shoot me down like Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, you understand me? Every single second is a bullet straight to my paycheck! You can’t pull this shit in live operations, Adam! If you ever do this on your own route once you get a van, the system will swallow you alive, spit you back out as a delivery driver for fucking Polish mattresses, and your rating will plunge deeper than Harvey Weinstein’s career! Do you hear me?!”

Adam blinked rapidly. A furious inner monologue immediately erupted in his head about how he absolutely despised dill because it reminded him of school cafeteria food and childhood trauma, and that it might be smarter to sprint to the nearest corner store for a fresh bunch of parsley. Resigned, he took a breath and opened his mouth to pitch all of this to Stránský—

Adam froze mid-motion. One foot remained suspended in the air. His eyes blew wide to the size of the QR codes on the bags. Inside his mind, he started screaming instantly: “What? Me? The last thing I drove was Need for Speed on a buddy’s PlayStation a few years ago! In Prague traffic with this fully loaded tank, I won’t survive five yards!”

He wanted to say it out loud, already squeezing out the first syllable—

“Perfect, I’ll take that as your enthusiastic, professional yes!” Stránský barked, slapping a heavy ring of car keys into his palm without warning and roughly shoving him toward the driver’s side. “Get in, move your ass, adjust your mirrors, and whatever you do, don’t touch the radio. The left speaker is loose; it buzzes, and every time we hit a Prague pothole, it screams like a stuck pig. Let’s roll, heading toward Vinohrady. And ignore those glowing warning lights… they’re just decorative.”

Ten minutes later, Adam was living his own private version of driving hell. The manual gearbox in the old Caddy had a stiff clutch, the car was weighed down by the twenty orders in the back, and Stránský’s practical tips felt like psychological warfare. On top of that, around every tight corner you could hear the grocery bags shifting and sliding in the cargo bay, which was bad news because every bag movement risked damaging the goods, meaning Adam would have to pay for it out of pocket. And his pocket didn’t have much in it… basically nothing.

“Keep it centered! Where the hell are you looking, there are pedestrians! Hit the gas, you’re not giving a sightseeing tour to retirees! Here in Prague, Adam, you need to remember one foundational rule: you have to park like a total dick. Yes, that is an official technical term in courier logistics,” Stránský roared, while Adam’s palms were sweating so badly the steering wheel was slipping from his grip. They were entering a terrifyingly narrow, one-way cobblestone street in Vinohrady, where luxury cars were packed tight on both sides with mere inches to spare. “Look at this street. It’s tighter than my ex’s cunt. If you try to be a good little boy and search for a legal parking spot here, you might find one somewhere on the outskirts of Brno. So what do you do? You stop right in the dead center of the street, slam that magic red button for the four-way hazard lights, and in an instant, you’re an invisible, untouchable emergency vehicle. Nobody can tow you because you don’t exist. Move it, stop right here!”

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In a panic, Adam slammed on the brakes. The Caddy jerked to a dead stop smack in the middle of the one-way lane. Not even four seconds later, a black BMW skidded to a halt right behind their rear bumper. Its driver, a guy in an expensive tailored suit, immediately glued his hand to the horn. A deafening, unending blast echoed off the historic building facades.

Adam’s left leg began to shake uncontrollably on the clutch. He turned to Stránský, completely hysterical inside: “Mr. Stránský, I have to pull forward, he’s going to kill me, I can’t just leave the car in the middle of the street!” He parted his lips to finally blurt it out—

“Ignore him, that guy’s just in a rush to get home and jerk off!” Stránský bellowed, kicked his door open, and dragged Adam along behind him toward the back of the van. Stránský grabbed the company smartphone, checked the app, and yelled: “Customer number one, Mrs. Nováková. The app says exactly five bags! Look here, Adam! First, you find the right bags, take the scanner, and scan the QR codes taped to the top of the bags before you even pull the order out of the car! You’ve got to be a hundred percent certain you’ve got everything and aren’t hauling someone else’s stuff! Got it? Start beeping!”

Adam took the scanner, his heart pounding as he clicked through the five codes, and Stránský loaded paper bags stamped with the company logo into both of his arms. Stránský noticed Adam was terrified of the guy in the BMW, who was still honking hysterically while furiously gesticulating.

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“ADAM, YOU’RE DELIVERING FOOD, DO YOU GET IT?!” Stránský yelled over the relentless blare of the BMW’s horn, pulling him toward the building entrance. “YOU ARE A GOD RIGHT NOW! YOU CAN PARK WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU WANT! WITHOUT YOU, THESE PEOPLE WOULD STARVE TO DEATH! Move it, we’re going to the fourth floor, the elevator is out of order, obviously! Pick up the pace!” Stránský turned toward the BMW driver, flipped him the bird, and gave a deep, theatrical bow with a huge grin, as if taking the stage at a Broadway play.

They had no idea what was waiting for them upstairs.

The door to apartment 3B slowly creaked open. Standing there was Mrs. Nováková. She had to be a hundred and fifty-five years old, wearing glasses with lenses thick as the bottom of a beer mug, gripping an old-fashioned magnifying glass tightly in her right hand. They set the bags down on her threshold, muttered a thank you, and were ready to bolt.

“Hold on a minute, boys. Don’t you go anywhere; you’re staying right here,” the old woman hissed in a voice that sounded like it remembered the postwar monetary reform. “Last time, that cheeky colleague of yours brought me eggs that had a three stamped on them! A three! I pay for premium free-range organic eggs; by law, they have to start with a zero! Somebody in that sketchy warehouse of yours swapped them on purpose and is frying my expensive organic eggs in butter right now! I’m checking every single one.”

Stránský rolled his eyes so far back into his skull that Adam worried they’d stay stuck in his neck. The old lady set the egg carton onto the hallway table, switched on a desk lamp, hovered the magnifying glass over the first egg, and began her inspection. One by one. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly. Meanwhile, the timer in the courier app on Stránský’s phone shifted color into an aggressive, flashing red. DELAY: 12 MINUTES.

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Adam stood in the hallway, waiting to see what would happen.

“Aha! Look at this! Caught you!” the old lady suddenly snapped after checking roughly eight eggs, a look of pure triumph plastered across her face as she nearly jammed the magnifying glass straight into Adam’s eyeball. “This egg is cracked! Look at that fracture line! And that one next to it, too! Two broken eggs! I knew it! I want the total price of my grocery order discounted by exactly two-tenths of this carton’s cost right this second, or I will bash this whole delivery over your young, insolent heads! I survived the Nazis and the Bolsheviks; I’ll eat the two of you for dinner along with these damn eggs!”

Stránský let out a heavy, bone-tired sigh. He pulled the company phone from his pocket and dialed customer support.

“Helena, hey, it’s Stránský,” he said into the receiver, sounding like a general who had just lost a war. “I’ve got a critical situation in Vinohrady. High-stakes poultry crime. The customer found two hairline cracks on her eggs and is demanding an instant financial refund equivalent to the price of an average egg yolk... What? Yeah, please calculate in your wonderful system what two-tenths of a sixty-crown carton comes out to... No, I can’t just offer her a promo code for next time; the woman will physically barricade the doorway... Fine, dock it from my own pay if you have to, just approve it, thanks.”

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Adam kept standing there, his arms stretched down to his knees. Once the refund went through, Stránský grabbed him by his jacket collar and dragged him back out into the stairwell. “Now you’ve learned how to process a refund on the fly...” he mused. “And how to face our greatest natural predator: the pensioner.”

Once they finally escaped the apartment of Christopher Columbus’s ex-girlfriend, they had to trek all the way back down to the Caddy, scan, and grab the remaining paper bags for the next customer in the very same building. This time it was a monstrous, gargantuan order boasting a ridiculous 22 items packed with heavy water bottles, gallons of milk, beer packs, and canned goods.

Loaded up like pack mules, they shuffled back to the ground-floor hallway at the foot of the stairs. Adam had hit rock bottom physically. Sweat was pouring off him. Just as he and Stránský stood at the base of the staircase bracing for that brutal climb up to the fourth floor on foot, the door to the ground-floor apartment right beside them clicked open.

Peeking out was a gorgeous, tall blonde. She was around twenty-five, clearly just rolling out of bed, wearing only a silky, pink, completely translucent robe that concealed very little of her flawless figure.

She glanced at the mountain of paper bags Adam and Stránský were wrestling with, then looked at the two of them… sweaty, filthy, and completely drained.

“Oh... that must not be for me,” the blonde purred in a honeyed voice, sizing them up. “I didn’t order nearly that much stuff.”

Adam and Stránský looked at each other. Adam parted his lips to try and squeak out that they were hauling it all the way up top—

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Right then, strolling around the hallway corner straight from the main building entrance, appeared the Zen Courier. It was that laid-back guy from the morning ramp. He walked with total ease, holding in his hand—not slung over his shoulder, but carried casually by the handles with a few fingers—a single, tiny paper bag, from which a French baguette and the neck of an expensive bottle of champagne poked out temptingly.

“Here you go, lovely lady,” the Zen Courier smiled, flashing his picture-perfect, Hollywood-white teeth as he handed her the lightweight little bag.

The blonde lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh, thank you so much, sweetheart,” she said, her robe sliding open slightly. From a tiny pocket, she pulled out a crisp banknote. “Here’s a little something for being so quick and sweet.”

It was a five-hundred-crown bill. A clean five-hundred tip just for carrying one tiny bag into the ground floor.

The Zen Courier pocketed the cash, slowly turned toward the utterly devastated Adam - who was clutching four heavy paper bags of mineral water with white knuckles- and waved the bill through the air right in front of Adam’s face with impeccable comedic flair.

“See that, brother?” the Zen Courier winked at Adam with the serenity of a monk. “When you pour genuine love into this gig, the universe pays you back in a heartbeat.” Whistling a cheerful tune, he spun on his heel and sauntered out of the building. The blonde offered a warm smile and gently shut her apartment door.

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Adam stood frozen at the base of the stairs. His arm muscles were screaming in agony. Words from his high school literature teacher about winning the Nobel Prize began echoing through his skull with terrifying volume. He wanted to scream. He wanted to unleash the longest string of filthy profanities known to man. He took a massive breath. His mouth dropped wide open.

“Adam, goddammit, stop staring like an idiot at that door and get your ass up those stairs! In a few minutes we need to be ringing Lucie Bílá’s doorbell, and that dill is already starting to drop dead in the heat of the van!” Stránský barked, shoving him toward the first step.

Twenty minutes later, the battered Caddy screeched to a halt in front of a luxurious villa, its worn tires howling. Adam burst from the car, gripping the paper grocery bags, topped off with that limp, half-dead bunch of dill. Stránský ran right behind him, wild-eyed.

The front door swung open, and it wasn’t just Lucie Bílá standing there. There was an entire camera crew, two massive studio cameras, bright production lights, and Lucie herself holding a microphone, speaking straight to the lens: “...and to all my lovely viewers, we are cooking LIVE right now, and our secret recipe is waiting on its final, most crucial ingredient, which is being brought to us by...” She turned toward the panting, sweaty Adam wearing his FoodRunner cap. “Aha! FOODRUNNER has brought our groceries! Come on in, Mr. Courier, come straight into the kitchen with us, our audience is waiting for you!”

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The crew pushed Adam right into the glare of the studio lights in a stunning, gleaming kitchen. The livestream overlay on the monitor read: 200,000 VIEWERS LIVE.

“You’ve got that fresh parsley for me, don’t you?” Lucie Bílá beamed her iconic, radiant smile and reached into the bag.

Adam’s throat went completely dry. His brain was spinning: “You wouldn’t believe it, Mrs. Bílá - there was a tragic accident on the ramp, an orange Lamborghini obliterated your parsley, and this is dill...” Resigned, he opened his mouth to confess and say it out loud—

Lucie Bílá pulled the wilted bunch of dill from the bag. The camera zoomed in for an ultra-sharp, unforgiving close-up of the sad, drooping herb. Total silence gripped the control room.

Adam stood frozen before the lens. The camera framed him squarely - he looked just like Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, right in that scene where he looks like a helpless, wide-eyed puppy. All 200,000 people online were staring at his terrified face. He braced for the axe to fall, for Stránský to murder him, for his life to be effectively over.

Lucie Bílá looked down at the dill, looked up at Adam, a flicker of sheer shock in her eyes for a split second, but like the consummate professional she was, she didn’t miss a single beat. She looked right down the barrel of the camera and cheered:

“Well, isn’t that wonderful! You read my mind! Ladies and gentlemen, our delivery guy from FoodRunner is an absolute culinary genius! That’s right, parsley is boring; a real, authentic Bohemian soup needs dill! FoodRunner simply knows what I’m cooking before I do! Thank you so much, young man!”

She threw her arm around the paralyzed Adam and planted a kiss on his cheek. Adam drew a breath to finally stammer out a thank-you—

“And now run along to save the next hungry soul, you hero!” Lucie laughed, gently nudging him out of frame. Throughout the entire broadcast, he hadn’t managed a single syllable, but that quiet, terrified look of his went viral in an instant.

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Two hours later, when Adam and Stránský pulled back into the depot, a crowd of about twenty couriers was waiting on the ramp. Ventil, Zen, Autograph, even Tereza, and the Zen Courier too. The second Adam stepped out of the Caddy, the whole place erupted into applause and cheering. A YouTube video was already trending on his phone screen: “FoodRunner Courier Saves Lucie Bílá’s Live Show”… 1 million views in two hours. From one minute to the next, Adam had become the biggest celebrity in the entire warehouse. On his very first day.

“Well look at you, superstar,” Stránský began, lighting up a long-awaited cigarette. “You didn’t utter a damn word all day, man, but now everybody knows your name—even corporate management. I just got a text from the dispatcher saying you’re going out on your own route solo tomorrow. And remember how this job really works. Courier work isn’t just about hauling groceries around. It’s psychology, Adam. You’ve got to read the customer before you even set the bag down. And if you fuck up, you play it cool like a pro, act like you didn’t fuck up anything at all. Otherwise, the job will fuck you up completely! When you see an old lady, tug at her heartstrings and act like her favorite grandson. When you see a corporate manager, be fast as lightning, because that guy’s not giving you a tip for chatting. You need to know when to lie to the app, when to park like the biggest asshole on earth, and when to tell customer support that a stray dog ate the groceries just to justify your delay. It’s a jungle out here, kid. You’re either the hunter, or you’re the prey that ends up with a herniated disc and an empty wallet, just like Sophocles over there.”

He gestured toward an old, hunchbacked man who was delivering express orders to supplement his pension, currently shuffling toward his car carrying three bags in hand.

Stránský blew out a cloud of smoke and slapped Adam on the back so hard it knocked the wind out of him: “But you didn’t piss your pants, man! So starting tomorrow, you get your own set of wheels,” he said, grinning with genuine pride.

Thanks for reading! Episode 4 is already in the works - Adam’s real journey as a solo courier is just getting started. Will he manage to pull his family out of their financial wreck, and can he survive live operations on the unforgiving streets of Prague without Stránský watching his back? Subscribe and you will see soon.

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They lack harmony. Harmony of living. Only the person with harmony in his life feels successful, and it is this feeling of real success that all of us seek. Most people think they want the car, the money, the sales, the partner, the house, the health... That’s not true. If they do achieve that, it will be great, but the feeling will not be as they expected. What they really need is harmony. Only that will give them a sense of success. If you now wonder what harmony is, I will tell you what I understand by the harmony of livin

The harmony of living is when you feel like everything is in order and when you can completely relax and very quickly get into an absolute mindless state. Meaning that you are not feeling any uncomfortable pressure in any area of your life (which we will talk about below). It is a feeling of peace that gives you strength. It illustrates a wonderful sense of security and satisfaction. People who feel this way can feel real success. And that, friends, is the harmony of living. These people feel great and successful, regardless of their specific goals, their bank accounts, or their health.

Therefore, from time to time, you see a perfectly happy person around, although, from your point of view, they are financially down. Or a seriously ill person who laughs, is happy and even-minded. That is because their lives are ruled by HARMONY.

Harmony in life is so important that we would never be satisfied without it.

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When I talk about harmony, I mean a balance of the five most important areas of life. A person who does not achieve this balance will most likely never feel successful. The harmony of the five areas of life can only be achieved by regular work on these areas. The ten activities that will help you work on your harmony of living daily will be presented to you in the Harmonic decalogue.

5 MOST IMPORTANT AREAS OF LIFE

1. Relationships

2. Health

3. Finances

4. Achieving goals

5. Education

These are the 5 most important areas of life in the 21st century. The most important areas of life have changed (historically) for each era. However, we can say that these five areas have been the most important for centuries, and I dare to say that with the consideration of the current fast-paced development of the world - especially now in 2026 - that they will not change for the next few centuries. At a time when finances in the world did not play an important role, they could be replaced, for example, with survival, property, security, status, etc.

However, we will focus on current areas of life and why they are so important in our lives. Before we begin to discuss the Harmonic decalogue, let’s describe them in more detail. They are crucial, and you should know more about them, so, keep on reading.

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With mind maps, you eliminate the fog. You get an immediate, bird’s-eye view of your entire literary universe on a single screen. You never have to get lost in your own drafts again.

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“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Albert Einstein

What Exactly Is a “Mind Map”?

A mind map is a clear, graphical layout of keywords, branches, and concepts that visually maps relationships, hierarchies, and narrative connections. It is the bridge between raw creative brainstorms and structured, executable writing.

When I am in full writing mode, my mind map is like oxygen. I refuse to type a single paragraph without having my visual map open beside me.

If you want absolute clarity, immediate control, and an effortless overview of your book, you must master visual mapping today.

Enjoying this writing breakdown?

Hit the Subscribe button right now to get actionable, no-nonsense frameworks delivered straight to your inbox every week!

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Digital Ecosystems vs. Analogue Boards

Back when I started, I tried sketching mind maps on paper. The problem? As a story expands, paper breaks down. You cross things out, scribble over margins, spill coffee, and within three days your master plan looks like unreadable graffiti.

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Now that you know how to keep the reader interested from page one, you have to keep the pace and keep writing. This is your next non-negotiable task.

If you’re enjoying these practical guides on writing and publishing, hit the Subscribe button below! Join our growing community of authors bringing their books to life

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Your Only Job Is to Write

Another task within this framework is simple, and it is not difficult to explain. Your job is to write. How do you actually do it?

Come up with an action plan that suits you. We all share the exact same amount of time—24 hours a day—but we do not live the same lives. Your schedule is individual, and I cannot determine the exact hour when you should sit down at your keyboard.

Do you want to have a day off from writing? Fine… then write more the day before.

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You can, of course, decide to write 1000 or 2000 words a day. It is entirely your decision, and the more words you write per day, the sooner you will have the first draft of your manuscript to work with.

I personally aim to write 2000 words a day. It’s a habit that allowed me to publish two books this year and write a total of three. Stephen King also writes at least 2000 words a day, and since I like to compare myself with the best in the industry, I assigned myself to this exact number.

Open the Door to a Thief?

It is difficult. Sometimes I simply do not want to write. You probably know the feeling too - you are not in the mood, you feel uninspired, you want to do something else, you don’t know what to write, or you are thinking about current life problems.

But if I let this “thief” of my career influence me, I would never write a single book. I could never call myself a writer.

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Would you allow a thief to come into your home, steal from you, and certainly help him carry out the furniture?

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Many of you have asked me a crucial question: How do I actually start writing the story itself? Today’s topic is directly connected to the very beginning of your work. What is most important when you sit down to write those first lines?

It is the way you capture the immediate interest of your reader. Your book must be catchy from the very first page.

Think about how people browse today. Whether someone is walking through a physical bookstore flipping through paperbacks or downloading a free sample onto their Kindle, they usually give an author just a page or two. They read those initial lines to figure out if the book is interesting and if the writing style suits them. It is these first few pages that have to be utterly enthralling. They dictate whether the reader walks up to the cashier…or hits “Buy Now”… with your book, or with a book written by someone else.

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Engaging the reader from page one is the superpower of every successful author. It is an art form that you must learn to master perfectly.

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It isn’t a secret that some habits lead to success, and others lead straight to failure.

In my first book, I already revealed six habits of successful personalities… habits that live inside every successful person, whether they realize it consciously or not. Those who’ve mastered them tend to keep winning, long-term. Those who haven’t are usually the ones we quietly label “unsuccessful.” These six habits apply to every sphere of life, every profession, every goal you could name. They’ll determine how far you actually get, and whether you ever reach where you want to be. If you haven’t read them yet, I’d genuinely recommend it… they pair perfectly with everything in this book.

Now, there are plenty of books out there about success and the habits behind it. Guides, methods, rules, frameworks … you’ll find no shortage of them, and many are genuinely excellent.

But here’s what I want you to understand: there is only one key to success. And every guide, every method, every rule from every book ever written on this topic can be pasted directly into that one key.

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Think of the “Key to Success” like a USB drive. Empty, it’s useless - no principles, no instructions, no habits, nothing. It only becomes valuable once you load something onto it. What you put on that drive determines whether you succeed or not. All those books about success? They’re really just describing the content - not the key itself.

Here’s where most people get stuck: they’ve collected a ton of information about what leads to success, but they have no “carrier” to actually run it on. No solid place to put that information so it can be used. It’s like having a powerful computer with no operating system installed. Doesn’t matter how much you know — you could be a programming genius, an elite hacker — without an operating system, none of it runs.

It’s a HABIT.

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That’s it. If you load your acquired knowledge into individual habits, you have a real shot at success (or, depending on what you load, a real shot at failure). Ask me what separates success from failure, and I’ll give you one answer, every time: a set of habits. Every book on the subject talks about planning, communication, trust, mindset… I could go on foreve… but none of that functions as a universal key on its own.

Only once we set a goal, define the actions that move us toward it, and turn those actions into habits, do we finally have something to run on our USB key to success. Follow that key step by step, and you’ll figure out which habits are working, which aren’t, which need replacing, which need adding, and which need deleting entirely. That’s when you’re actually on the path.

Want to be a successful athlete?

First, acquire the habits of a successful athlete - then become one. What does that look like? Training. Eating well. Recovering properly. Getting inspired. Visualizing the win before it happens. Studying people further ahead than you. Those habits, repeated, shape the athlete. Skip the training, skip the recovery, wake up hungover instead of reste… and you’ve built the opposite set of habits. The “unsuccessful” ones. And no matter how much raw talent you started with, that person is never becoming a champion.

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So if you’re looking for the universal key to success… it’s your habits. Nothing else. Become who you want to be before you actually are it. And the only way to do that is by acquiring - or at minimum, approaching - the habits of people who’ve already made it in that field. Or start simpler: visualize yourself as someone who’s already mastered those habits.

Wrong. That person will never make the money, because they’re using their USB key backwards. There are corrupted files on it… files that will never lead to money, no matter how long they wait. It only works one way: “Not until, only if...” The moment you delete the corrupted files and replace them with the right ones… that’s the moment you actually start becoming who you want to be. The money follows. Not the other way around.

Think about how people like Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Cristiano Ronaldo, Muhammad Ali, Richard Branson, Floyd Mayweather or Anthony Robbins actually got there.

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You think Ronaldo was born wearing down defenders and scoring impossible goals? You think Bill Gates woke up one morning already understanding software, markets, and scale? No. They uploaded the right files to their USB of success, one habit at a time, consistently, for years… and it eventually compounded into everything we admire about them now. Ronaldo slowly learned to read the game. Gates slowly learned how to build and ship. And along the way? Of course they uploaded bad files too. Everyone does. The difference is they noticed, deleted them, and replaced them with something better.

AI can hand you information faster than any book on this topic ever could. But information was never the bottleneck. It’s still the “carrier”… the habit… that decides whether any of it ever gets used. You can have the smartest AI on the planet sitting in your pocket and still fail, if you never turn its output into consistent, repeated action.

I’ve messed up plenty of times because of my own bad habits. I couldn’t even count how many. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of… honestly, it’s a reason to smile, because you can only fix a mistake once you’ve actually spotted it. There’s no shortcut around that part. This book exists to make that road faster and easier for you. Through the harmonic decalogue- which you’ll get to know intimately over the coming pages … I want to hand you ten files, ten domains, that once uploaded to your own USB of success, move you in the right direction. How you apply them to your specific life is entirely up to you.

After my first book, 6 Habits of Successful Personalities, came out, I moved into personal coaching, and people kept asking me for more.

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Readers from multiple continents flooded my inbox with questions - mostly about how to work toward success daily, in a way that complemented those original six habits. Knowing the six wasn’t enough for them. They wanted a system… a real, working USB key… to build on, day after day.

You probably know someone exactly like that. Successful from the outside. Running on empty on the inside. If you’re honest with yourself, you might even be that person right now.

That’s exactly who this book is for.

👉 Subscribe so you don’t miss the next chapter - this is where we start building the ten habits, one at a time.

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💬 Drop a comment: do you know someone (maybe even yourself) who looks successful from the outside but doesn’t feel it on the inside? I’d love to hear about it.

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10 Simple Steps to Move Your Life to a Higher Level

What if I told you that right now, you’re probably winning in one area of your life... while quietly losing in four others?

Most people don’t notice it until it’s too late. They’re crushing it at work, but their relationships are running on fumes. Or they’ve finally got their health together, but their finances are a mess they don’t want to look at. We tend to focus on the one area that’s loudest - the one that’s on fire - while the rest slowly falls out of balance.

That imbalance has a name. Or rather, the absence of it does.

It’s called Harmony.

Fueling the next late-night writing shift and keeping the stories independent. Thank you for the coffee! ☕🚚

So what exactly is the Harmony of Living?

It’s a mental state of calm, well-being, and composure. It’s that rare, grounded feeling that everything is in order - not perfect, not without effort, but in order. It’s the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’re actually moving forward in all five areas that matter most:

• Relationships

• Health

• Finances

• Achieving your goals

• Education / growth

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Everyone wants this. Almost nobody has it. And in 2026 - with more distractions, more pressure, and more competing priorities pulling at our attention than any generation before us … building real harmony has never been harder, or more necessary.

Here’s the good news: it’s not luck, and it’s not talent. It’s ten specific, learnable habits.

Over the coming chapters, I’m going to walk you through all ten - one at a time, one Substack post at a time. By the time we’re done, you won’t just understand what harmony looks like. You’ll know exactly how to build it into your own life, permanently.

Fair warning: once you apply what’s in this series, people around you are going to start asking you one very specific question, over and over again

You’ll want a good answer ready. This series will give you one.

We start today with the Foreword — the “why” behind everything that follows. If you’re serious about actually finishing this journey instead of just bookmarking it for “someday,” do yourself a favor:

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👉 Hit subscribe now. New chapters drop regularly, and you won’t want to read this series out of order.

Let’s begin.

Let that sink in for a second.

Back in 2016, when I wrote the first edition of this book, there were 7.114 billion of us. A few years later, when I revised it, that number had climbed to 7.747 billion. Today, in 2026, we’ve crossed 8.2 billion. That’s over a billion new lives added in less than a decade … a billion new desires, goals, plans, options, and directions.

More people than ever. More noise than ever. More ways to get distracted than ever.

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Many of us are chasing the same goal, walking completely different paths. But the destination is what matters. If we get there, we call it success. If we don’t, we rarely talk about it out loud.

Here’s what I believe: since the day we’re born, our genes are coded with one relentless instruction - move forward. We grow, we learn, our hearts and brains never clock out, not even for a second. Nobody can argue with that. We are always moving.

But moving forward doesn’t automatically mean moving in the right direction. Forward can mean climbing toward success. Forward can just as easily mean speeding toward failure.

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Our internal thermostat rejects failure… so consciously, we all want the path that leads to success. And yet, for so many of us, it just doesn’t work out. You know people like this. You might even wonder if you’re one of them.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the successful person and the unsuccessful person started at the exact same place, chasing the exact same thing. So how did one make it, and the other didn’t?

It comes down to one thing.

A set of habits, picked up somewhere along the way, that quietly became part of who they are. Life is really just a collection of habits and paradigms we default to when we act, react, and respond to whatever the day throws at us. If people keep asking you why you’re so successful - or if you keep asking yourself why you’re not - the answer is the same in both cases: it’s your habits.

Take a boxer. A successful one trains a certain way, eats well, rests properly, studies his opponents, learns new techniques, builds his stamina. Those are his habits… and he’s good at them because he’s used to doing them, in a very specific way.

Now imagine that same boxer changes his habits. He skips training. He trades quality meals for fast food. He stays up late, sleeps less, shows up hungover instead of sharp. What happens to his career? He starts losing… fight after fight… assuming he even makes it to the ring at all.

Remember that. It hasn’t changed in ten years, and it won’t change in the next ten either , not even with AI writing your emails, optimizing your schedule, or coaching your workouts.

The tools around us are evolving fast. What separates the people who thrive from the people who don’t still comes down to the same six letters: H-A-B-I-T-S.

We start today with the Foreword - the “why” behind everything that follows. If you’re serious about actually finishing this journey instead of just bookmarking it for “someday,” do yourself a favor:

👉 Hit subscribe now - new chapters will be dropping regularly, and you really don’t want to miss the next one.

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And before you go - drop a comment below. Tell me: which of the five areas (relationships, health, finances, goals, education) do you feel most out of balance in right now? I read every single comment, and I want to know who’s actually here for this journey.

If you want to protect your work effectively, print out your finished second concept at least three times. Pack one in a large envelope and have it sent to your address via registered mail. When the package is delivered, do not open it. Place it in a safe, dry spot.

Why this is the best protection in 2026: Digital files can be hacked, metadata can be manipulated, and cloud services can fail. But a physical envelope with an official, date-stamped postal seal is a “living” witness to your work. In a potential legal dispute, that unopened, postmarked envelope is the ultimate, undeniable proof of when your manuscript existed in its final form. People are people, and you never know where your digital files might end up; but an unopened, sealed envelope is a fortress of truth that no hacker can breach.

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On the first page of your manuscript, write clearly:

• Author:

• Date:

• Working Title:

• Signature:

Protecting your handwriting is vital. I am sure that as a parent, you would not send your child into the world without protection. Treat your manuscript the same way. Most agents and publishers are professional and return manuscripts, but if they don’t, it is very good to have this “old-school” security in place.

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Now you have a solid idea of how to start typing, what devices to use, and how to protect your work. Don’t feel overwhelmed - you will learn to do these things automatically. You have enough information right now to start writing your book. It is no science. All the writer has to do is write. Now, let’s look at the backbone of your writing: The Subject.

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In my last post, we left off at the absolute peak of excitement. You just hit the keyboard one last time. You printed out or exported the final pages of your manuscript. You feel like a god.

But as I warned you: This is exactly where the most dangerous trap in an author’s career is waiting.

What you hold in your hands is not a finished book. It is your First Draft (The First Concept). And it should be hidden from the world. Nobody should see it yet except you. Take extremely good care of that rule.

Here is the brutal reality of what comes next.

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🛑 The Seduction Trap: Do Not Show It to Anyone

The moment the first draft is done, many writers feel an overwhelming urge to show it to other people. Friends, wife, husband, parents...

I know exactly what you are doing. You would love to hear someone else’s opinion because you want immediate validation. You want a hug. You want them to tell you you’re a genius. But you cannot ask someone else’s opinion about something that is not yet finished.

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