It had been inside me for a long time. When I was very young, even in third grade, I had whole worlds going on in my mind. I would get in trouble in class because I was physically sitting there, but mentally I was somewhere else. The teacher would have to call my name several times before I came back to the real world. I loved being in those other worlds. It was wonderful. At the time, I did not know that meant I was a storyteller. I did not understand that those worlds could be written down someday and that other people might want to read them. Looking back now, I believe the author was already there. He was just waiting to be recognized.

I wanted to be an artist. That was the big dream. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to grow up and become an artist. And I actually was an artist for a while. Later in life, I realized that writing and art are not as separate as I once thought. They use the same creative part of my mind. Art helped me see images, emotion, shape, and atmosphere. Writing lets me do that with scenes, characters, dialogue, and story. So in a way, becoming an author did not replace the artist in me. It gave him his life back.