Turning a Life Around: Man who grew up in Happy Hill began career as a novelist while serving time in jail

Growing up in the Happy Hill community, Derrick Wilson spent a lot of time at the William C. Sims Recreation Center.

"I came down to the rec center all the time," he said. "I loved to play ball."

In between basketball games, Ben Piggott, the center director, got to know Wilson and his friends.

When Wilson, now 27, showed up recently with a thriller he had written, Piggott was surprised.

"I didn't know there was an author in there," Piggott said.

"To be honest with you, neither did I," Wilson said.

Wilson discovered the writer inside while in jail for 17 months on drug charges. There, he decided that he didn't like the direction his life was taking.

"I knew it was time for a change," he said. "I just felt it wasn't the life for me."

Wilson had been brought up going to church but he had drifted. As he looked at turning his life around, he reconnected with his Christian faith, and he got a composition notebook.

"I said, ‘God, I don't know where I'm going with this,'" Wilson said.

A story came and he started writing.

"I feel like it was a gift," he said.

Consulting the dictionary

Three pages in, the man he was sharing a cell with asked him what he was doing.

"I told him I was writing a book, and he didn't believe me," Wilson said.

He kept writing. To expand his vocabulary, he looked through a dictionary. Several notebooks later, the man he was sharing the cell with acknowledged that it did, indeed, look as though Wilson was writing a book. By the time Wilson was done, he had filled up seven composition notebooks.

Wilson lives with Cynthia Conner and their 7-year-old daughter, Deneisha Wilson, and, while he was waiting to come home, he asked Conner to do research into possible publishers. He was released from Forsyth County jail last year, and, this summer, he self-published No More Secrets under the pen name Michael Patterson.

This Friday, he will be back at the Sims center to talk about his book and about how he turned his life around. Piggott hopes that Wilson will inspire young people in the community.

"Let them know that they can be somebody," Piggott said.

With Wilson, Piggott said, they can say, "Hey, that brother came from Happy Hill."

Piggott also sees Wilson's talent as a writer as a way to show that sports is not the only way to be cool.

"There are also other talents out there," Piggott said.

Piggott said that when Wilson gave him a copy of the book, which is about a black man in Winston-Salem who unknowingly gets caught up in organized-crime intrigues, he planned to read a few pages before taking care of some household chores. Instead, he kept turning pages.

The story has foul language and sex, so it's not a book that Wilson encourages young people to read.

Wilson, who lives in a neighborhood north of Smith Reynolds Airport these days, moved to the Happy Hill community when he was 13.

His mother had become too sick to take care of him, so he and his siblings moved in with their adult sister, Sharon Wilson.

Growing up, Wilson always liked to read, and teachers at school told him that he had a gift for writing. But, other than assigned projects, he didn't do much writing.

He dropped out of Parkland High School and later earned a GED at Forsyth Technical Community College.

For work, he did such things as paint houses and deliver meal trays at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

"I was hanging with the wrong crowd," he said. "I had downfalls and trouble with the law."

A drug bust led to a conviction for attempted trafficking.

Now with God at his side, with one book out and with others on the way -- a sequel, a detective novel and a horror novel are in the works -- he is feeling that he has found his way.

As Wilson put it in a note to friends on the book's acknowledgement's page: "I feel I'm a prime example of change. So, whenever you feel discouraged, know that there is a way for I come from the same blocks such as yourself, and, if I can make a transition, so can you."

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.

■ Derrick Wilson will be signing copies of his novel No More Secrets from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at William C. Sims Sr. Recreation Center at 1201 Alder St. For more information, call 336-726-2837.