A common refrain I hear among writers is that they fell in love with the written word at a very early age. That ‘twern’t me. Television, Movies, and, to a lesser extent, radio were the tools I used to stuff my imagination. As my 1st and 2nd grade teachers could attest, words on page failed to hold my attention for long. But I can pinpoint exactly when that disinclination towards reading started to change.

I must have been about eight that night I spied my older brother and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. Of course at the time I had no idea what it was. “Were they playing a game?” I wondered. They were rolling dice, but there was no board. Instead stacks of books and sheets of graph paper covered the table. I couldn’t follow the action but one thing was clear to me. My brother and his friends were having fun. A lot of fun. Being the inquisitive younger brother it was not long before I was shooed away from the table. Continue reading →