Reading and writing have always been part of my life. I grew up in a house filled with books and in a family where everyone read both widely and often. I remember the reaction of my kindergarten teacher when I brought in my favorite book of that year – an illustrated version of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Sixty years later, I can still recite it.
Books were frequent gifts. Some early volumes that made a big impression on me were Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Tarzan books in particular, and the Robert Heinlein juveniles. I read my copy of Starman Jones until it fell apart. I can look over the Newberry Medal nominees from the 1960s and early 70s and see book after book that I was given for my birthday or Christmas and which I read multiple times.
I can remember being on vacation when I was about six years old. My father was reading The Lord of the Rings which he had been introduced to by our paperboy. I pestered him to read some of it out loud to me. When I finally read the books on my own, maybe eight years later, I recognized that what he had read to me was Gandalf’s flight from Isengard.
It was a fourth grade teacher who introduced me to Narnia. I read those books over and over as a child and then read them to my own children. Our shared love of the Narnia books was one of the things my wife and I first bonded over. Unlike my wife, I did not make it a habit of crawling into wardrobes hoping to find my way to Narnia – but that was only because Lori had access to more wardrobes than did I. There were other books we bonded over as well. Both of us had found memories of My Side of the Mountain and Misty of Chincoteague.
My father wrote poetry and eventually edited and wrote a regular column for a recreational newsletter. My brothers both write and one now teaches writing. I can remember as a boy trying to write a story (strongly influenced by a collection of old Buck Rogers comic strips) and struggling to understand why it didn’t sparkle in the same way as the books I read. What was the secret? It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the secret was hard work.
My writing output has ebbed and flowed over the years, but it has picked up in the past ten years or so thanks in large part to a supportive writing group. Want to read more? My stories can be found in Daily Science Fiction, The First Line, the anthologies Fantastic Trains and Unrealpolitik, and more.
