Cleveland Shock Jock/Music Journalist Chris Akin Finds Little Victories in Emotional New Memoir
The first book by infamous Cleveland shock jock/music journalist Chris Akin, Little Victories: A Tale Of Divorce, Debauchery And Finding Happiness, takes readers behind the façade and connects with the raw emotions that plagued a man on a year-long emotional roller coaster.
The story begins when Akin’s teenage sweetheart and wife of 23 years returns home from work and unexpectedly announces that she wants a divorce. The 344-page tome chronicles the year that follows, which includes ending a 12-year feud with his parents only to have his father pass away, a near-suicidal depression, and a final transformation into a stronger, healthier, and happier person.
“I didn’t decide to write a book as much as I just needed a place to vent,” Akin said. “With my wife gone, all my friends isolated away from me for years, and no relationship with my family for over a decade, I had no one to get this immense sadness out to except my laptop. So I wrote. I wrote novels on Facebook, but saved every day’s story of the pain I was feeling. Before long, the idea of following along into a book came to the forefront; not so much for releasing to the public, but as a way to capture the pain of things, give it a place, and quite literally close that proverbial chapter of my life.”
Little Victories is a real world, raw emotional look at a year that saw not only a shattering divorce, but a rebirth of a person who had spent his whole life raging against everyone, everything and who purposely pushed every button to come off as the most powerful person in any room. It profiles the victories as well as the defeats; some of which are so sickening in emotional scope that they will leave the reader questioning how Akin’s friends ever stuck around to see him through the tough times.
“If there’s anything I can say about my life, it’s that I’m surrounding by the single best core of friends in the world,” said Akin. “I regularly refer to them as ‘The Core 9.’ I try to explain them in terms that anyone can relate to, and the simplest way to put it is that these are the people that I would willingly let someone hack me up with a chainsaw Scarface-style to simply ensure they were safe. I also think that this collection of friends would do the same for me.”
For over 20 years, Akin has been a larger and louder than life character in the Cleveland media, beginning at the city’s largest free magazine, Scene. He then decided to take his media profile to the next level, starting his own magazine, Music’s Bottom Line, and venturing into the realm of radio where he would make a name for himself as one of the most feared radio hosts in Cleveland while hosting “The Metal Show” on Cleveland’s biggest radio station. Regularly in trouble with station management, but more beloved for their hard hitting style, “The Metal Show” took the Cleveland heavy metal scene by storm for well over a decade.
Still, Akin needed more, so he went to the internet where his rebellious ways could go unchallenged, joining “The Classic Metal Show” and converting the show from a mostly music program to a ferocious, attacking show that had no guilt about anything. Now, Akin is learning what it is like to be on the other side.
“I’ve interviewed over 1,000 rock stars in my life, and have always tried to get far more personal than anyone else out there,” he said. “I now understand ‘the dodge’ so many of these guys do. It’s hard enough to put your work out in public, but exposing every raw nerve, weakness, and vulnerability you have at your weakest possible moment is scary. Still, it’s that exposure that has already made this book a success for me. I stared my biggest faults in the face, made them public, and got stronger for doing so. Much like a band like Metallica, I truly feel like I’ve delivered my Master Of Puppets to the world. But unlike Metallica, I hope the criticism isn’t quite as biting.”
Little Victories is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.