My aspirations to become an author started when I was a child. At the age of ten, my family and I moved temporarily while our home was being renovated. Incidentally, I started having problems at school that year. It was not a psychological reaction to the move as we were only living around the corner from our home. Rather, it was a coincidence that the teacher was hostile and temperamental and made many of our lives so miserable that we often missed days and weeks as a result. Subsequently, I did not have many friends at this time so I started writing.
Initially, I wrote poems about a neighbour’s dog called Lucky whose friendship helped me through this difficult time. In fact, she cured my fear of dogs. During my teenage years, I started reading all the Harry Potter stories and it got me thinking about alternative narratives for some characters. As a result, I published them online and to my surprise many people loved my ideas and suggested I consider publishing my own novel. After writing other stories based on characters from books and T.V. shows, I started to give it some serious consideration.
My first approach was to figure out what stories I would want to write and who I would be my target audience? I do enjoy a wide range of narratives especially those that transport me to places that I have never been. Hogwarts is the obvious in that regard. Like many authors that I admire,several stories are born within us. We all have experiences to share and a lot of them become great stories that readers take to heart. I want to convey narratives that do exactly that but first I had to find a place to begin. After reflecting back on my own experiences, I believe that my life changed for the better during the ‘renovation period’.
Although it started tumultuous, by the end of those two years I was happier than I can remember. I had made friends with neighbourhood kids; been cured of my irrational fear of dogs (both greatly helped my confidence); and I started secondary school (high school) where my writing and creativity blossomed. I believe that the story in mind is worth telling and I hope readers will feel the same.
BookNutsey 