Two teens from Kingston and Plains Township charged with stealing from cars

<p>WHITE HAVEN &#8212; Borough resident Richard Amico wrote his book by accident. This isn&#8217;t a turn of phrase &#8212; Amico fell down a flight of stairs a little less than a decade ago and broke his neck. His post-accident accommodations forced him to exercise his imagination in place of his body.</p><p>&#8220;I was in a big brace that kept me immobile for about three months and that three months gave me a lot of time to think,&#8221; Amico said. &#8220;At first, what I wanted to do was talk a little bit about the story of what can happen to you and how it can alter your life. Then I got carried away and it turned into the story I wrote, which really has to do with dreams. I had a lot of nightmares while I was in this condition and I got the idea, actually, from Stephen King.&#8221;</p><p>King wrote a book called &#8220;On Writing&#8221; in which he discusses his methods, gives his opinions on the art and offers advice to aspiring writers. One of the things King talks about in his book is the &#8220;one true sentence,&#8221; a short statement from which the rest of a story can grow.</p><p>Amico&#8217;s main character for his Northeastern Pennsylvania-based story, Franklin Jameson, dreams about a murder that subsequently occurs in the real world and causes Jameson to question a number of things. This is the one true sentence of Amico&#8217;s first novel, &#8220;(Un) Sound Mind.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Dreams are important and they can cause people to do a lot of things,&#8221; Amico said. &#8220;If the book is meant to leave readers with anything after they&#8217;re done reading, it&#8217;s that guilt can cause some serious problems for you. If you feel guilt in any way, it can affect your life and everybody else&#8217;s life around you.&#8221;</p><p>One of the characters Jameson turns to for help in &#8220;(Un) Sound Mind&#8221; is psychologist Dr. Ruth Klein. Klein became a fan favorite among &#8220;(Un) Sound Mind&#8221; readers, so Amico decided to revisit her for his next project. A native New Yorker who moved to Pennsylvania so his wife Ada could escape city life, Amico includes more of his own experiences in his next novel.</p><p>&#8220;The next story really begins in Manhattan and then it does migrate back into Northeast Pennsylvania,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It just begins out of town. I&#8217;ve got several other ideas that I&#8217;ve wanted to do that were kind of interesting &#8212; more socially responsible stories &#8212; but I&#8217;ll probably do the sequel first and then we&#8217;ll get to that.&#8221;</p><p>This isn&#8217;t Amico&#8217;s first foray into the realm of the written word. The avid reader turned mystery writer was a marketing manager who did a lot of technical and business plan writing in the corporate sector. He calls his reading research (he recently tried to count his book collection and stopped at 1,000) and his previous work experience his inaugural exercises in fiction writing.</p><p>Amico wakes up in the morning, walks around his housing development speaking ideas into a recorder (he thinks his neighbors judge him a crazy person) and returns home for more researching and fiction writing exercises. His &#8220;(Un) Sound Mind&#8221; sequel is no accident &#8212; he was drawn back to that world, thanks to the Amazon.com users who voiced their opinions on the original. Amico may not have dreamed his novel would be received so well, but that&#8217;s no accident either.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Local author Richard Amico&#8217;s first novel, &#8216;(Un) Sound Mind,&#8217; tells the story of a man who dreams about a murder that comes to pass. It takes place in Northeastern Pennsylvania. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_Author-photo1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Local author Richard Amico&#8217;s first novel, &#8216;(Un) Sound Mind,&#8217; tells the story of a man who dreams about a murder that comes to pass. It takes place in Northeastern Pennsylvania. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_HighRes_FrontCover_1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Local author Richard Amico&#8217;s first novel, &#8216;(Un) Sound Mind,&#8217; tells the story of a man who dreams about a murder that comes to pass. It takes place in Northeastern Pennsylvania. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_HighRes_FrontCover_1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Local author Richard Amico&#8217;s first novel, &#8216;(Un) Sound Mind,&#8217; tells the story of a man who dreams about a murder that comes to pass. It takes place in Northeastern Pennsylvania. </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Gene Axton</p><p>gaxton@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Gene Axton at 570-991-6121 or on Twitter @TLArts</p></shirttailMeta></div>

‘(Un) Sound Mind’ author and White Haven resident Richard Amico talks about accidents, Stephen King and his next project