I’ve always had this…habit? Let’s call it that, of finding myself in places I shouldn’t. That day, I’d stumbled okay, maybe I snuck, into the horror section of my local library which is off limits to kids my age. I mean, what did they expect? I’d read everything within my age limit and I was running out of options, plus I’d just finished the last Goosebumps book. A person has to do what a person has to do, ya feel me?

Anyway, somehow I found this book. Nightmare and Dreamscapes by Stephen King, and if you would’ve told me what this book did for me, I’d never believe you. Inside, King writes an Introduction that changed my life. He writes about his love for stories, how Ripley’s Believe it or Not taught him to believe in the unimaginable. Then at the end, he writes, “Okay? Ready? Fine. Here’s my hand. We’re going now. I know the way. All you have to do is hold on tight…and believe.”

Hold tight, I did. I cracked open every hardback or paperback with his name printed on the front. Misery, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, I even own the1983 January edition of Playboy because the first edition of Word Processor of the Gods was written inside. It was King who inspired my dream career. The only thing I could think about doing for the rest of my life, taking people on adventures. Being an author. Creating magic. I’d be a writer without him, but I don’t think I would have published if I never found his books.