Many moons ago, in the sci-fi sounding year of 2001, I sent a poem off to XY Magazine. I suppose you could call it that. Really it was just a few angsty paragraphs of my feelings, but to my surprise, they wrote back and said they would like to publish it. I’ve always been a reader, and like most bookworms, occasional bursts of writing would take place in between the devouring of novels. To be honest, I didn’t want to be a writer when I was young. I wanted to be a rock star, preferably punk, even though I barely had any interest in music or the punk movement. I think it was just the green Mohawk I was after. But there were times I toyed with the idea of creating stories of my own, and looking back, I can see how I constantly acted them out with my action figures, and later simply by daydreaming.

The little article published in XY magazine is what woke me from my daydreams, and the emails from those who related to what I wrote sealed the deal. The next year I started my first book. In twelve months, I think I managed to write four paragraphs. Working a full time job and feeling optimistic enough to write afterwards isn’t easy. When Andreas and I first talked about moving to Germany, losing my employment was the biggest motivation. I’ve never seriously confessed that before, but now that I’ve made something of my unemployment, I feel okay saying it. Still, let’s not tell Andreas just yet. I wrote an entire book in less than a year, one that was pretty horrid. You’ll never see that one, but from lessons learned came The Cat in the Cradle, and two more novels after that one, but forget about those for now. My first book is out! I’m really, really, excited. And kind of scared. But mostly excited. No matter what becomes of my first foray into the land of hopeful novels, there’s a little kid inside of me that is feeling very proud of what he’s done, even though he still thinks that green Mohawk would look pretty cool.