We spoke to a 17-year-old who has already published six books

Khali Raymond is a young high school student I met through my father who works at Khali’s school, East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey. My father has been teaching his own version of financial literacy and life skills to juniors and seniors memat that school for the past four years.

During that time, one student in particular, Khali, has stood out prominently to my father and he has been telling me about him for almost a year and a half. Finally, after reading a few pages of one of his novels, I decided that I wanted to meet him in the flesh ask him how he has accomplished so much so quickly.

Where are you come from? What’s your background?

I’m from North New Jersey, born and raised in Newark. I come from a single-parent household, my dad passed away when I was a year old so my mom was left to do the work. I have three other siblings, two of them moved out of the house and the other one is 8-9ish. I go to East Side High School, I’m a junior (17 years old), about to become a senior.

When did you start writing?

I started writing at a young age; I really wasn’t serious until I was about 11-12. I taught myself.

Why did you start writing?

I started writing because, you know it’s fun, it’s easy… it is easy, you know. It’s like the closest thing I have to being God.

It’s like controlling your own destiny pretty much.

Yeah, it’s like when you’re putting words on paper, the characters in stories, like, you can shape them to whatever you want to shape them to. The sky’s the limit with it, you can do whatever you want in writing.

How did you publish your first book?

So I started writing my first book in late 2012. I hand wrote about 288 pages and I think in the spring of 2014 I finished. That’s when I started typing it into the computer and by October of that year is when I finished writing the first draft. But let me tell you, the first draft was horrendous. It took me 39 times to revise it, making corrections, grammatical errors… back then I didn’t know a lot about the editing process. But as time went on I started learning more about it. I read other work, but I did not simply read it to get inspired because I could check what type of grammar or punctuation they used. I learned pretty much through doing, rather than being taught it, to have an organic process. 

How many books have you had published?

As of now, six. I’ve got five under my government name and one under a pen name I use, Shamir Sherman.

How did you end up publishing six books?

To be honest, I don’t even know how I did it. I’ve been writing my whole life, but I really didn’t start to get into the novel game until late 2014, so roughly two years. I work fast, I had it all planned out. At first I thought I was going to only write one book, but I ended up making another one. I got that feeling, you know, when you do something that you like, you’re like “I wanna do that again!” I also know that I’m not just going to make a killing on one product, that’s why I put out several.

What inspires you in your writing?

Things around me, you know, people I see every day, it’s moments like this that make me want to do what I need to do so I can be successful and give the people something to vibe to. It’s just a matter of making change out there. Not too many people do things like this. In urban areas like Newark, not too many people have access to books and things like that so I feel that if I’m doing it, then I think I can make everyone else do it. I could give people a reason to, you know, make them feel inspired and do the things that I’m doing. It’s good to put out positive energy and inspire people.

What are your primary influences?

My primary influences would be my city, you know I do it for Newark. This is the place that raised me, the place I went to school, the place I was born in, grew up in, the place I live. It wouldn’t matter if I’m not in Newark anymore, Newark has a special place inside of me. I’ll never forget that. You cant forget where you come from because you could end up right back there too.

Do you dabble in other art forms? (i.e. rap, poetry, drawing, etc.)

I’m actually into rap, I like how it works. It’s more than just the words, it’s the culture for me. I’m not talking about the guys with the dreads, sippin’ with the double-cups, not that nonsense that’s not rap. It’s just commercial, for the masses. Real hip hop is out there you just have to find it, but you can’t find it on the radio; mostly underground. Half of these guys aren’t spitting bars anymore, that’s why I like the old sound

What do your friends/peers think about what you’re doing?

Some of them are actually impressed, I impressed a lot of people like, “you did that?!” I did it. When people first found out that I did it, they didn’t even believe me because when you see somebody like me, you don’t think that I do what I do. But once they look into it then they’re like “oh shit, he really did do it.”

I like surprising people. That’s why with certain projects I don’t even tell people what I’m working on because if you build too much hype, people are going to lose interest. Maybe I’ll say minor details about something I’m working on but I don’t tell like “oh I got this and that in there.”

Do you care about their opinions? Has anyone tried to knock you for doing what you do?

Yeah of course people say dumb shit all of the time about what I’m doing. I mean, one kid literally told me “oh go ahead and write another book,” and that’s what I did. No matter what you do in life somebody’s always going to have something negative to say. The best thing you can do is ignore them. I’m getting too old to be cursing out people. I’m mature about my situation so there’s no need for me to feed into that negativity, if people are going to talk, let them talk. Give them something to talk about, that’s what I’m doing.

Where do you see this taking you?

I see this taking me places that I never could’ve imagined. I remember in October, I went down to DC for the Million Man March. It was so nice, just a nice place to be. So relaxing, comfortable. If I keep doing what I’m doing I’m going to find myself in more places like that, going around to meet different people. It’s just a matter of being where I need to be and giving something the people can relate to. I’m not trying to live life in poverty, I’m definitely trying to raise my children (when I do decide to have children) in better surroundings.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a lot of things. I’ve got two new books that are going to drop on December 22nd of this year, the day I turn 18. Next year I’m going to drop a lot of work. I can’t exactly tell you what I have in it but needless to say its going to be some classic stuff a lot of people are going to like.

What is an example of an impactful moment in your life that you have incorporated into your work?

That’s hard to think about but I do have an example that I put in my memoir that’s coming out soon, ‘Behind the Pen.’ It was September of 2015 and the Mayor of Newark, Ras J. Baraka, came to East Side High School to speak to us about the My Brother’s Keeper initiative that Obama started. The mayor and his people were speaking to us, sharing the stories of their come-ups. To be honest, when I first started writing, you don’t know how badly I wanted to talk to the mayor and tell him about what I was doing. I even tried sending him a letter but I always got return to sender because it got sent to the wrong directory in City Hall, so that day was my opportunity.

After they spoke, he hung around for a little bit, I went up to him, shook his hand and told him “I enjoyed the words you said.” Next thing I know, I started telling him all about my work and that’s when everything fell into place and I made a personal connection with the mayor, I even have his email address. I didn’t expect that to happen, it was an opportunity right off the bat. That left a big impact on me, going around telling people about the work that I was doing with all these positive words.