I was five when I moved from the District of Columbia to Georgetown, Guyana.

I went from television, snow, and my mom, to heat that was almost self-aware, clouds that looked like castles, and my grandparents.

We lived with my Auntie Mona, her husband, Uncle Pat, and many, many books. The first family business was the school Granny and Grandpa used to run before retiring.

People who wanted their children to attend college in the States, the UK, or France sent them to my grandparents who would make them lethal scholars.

I was alone for the first time, and somehow I knew I’d better not make a big deal of it. So I read. And read, and then read some more. Pretty soon, I could see I’d run out of the books I was allowed to read.

So I began writing stories inside the stories. Stuff like the secret agent has a mission he must achieve, to find out more, turn to page 78. Each time I read a book, I left a book inside the book. I’m not sure if I was thinking about why as I made the stories, those were just fun.

Later, when I was casting about for something to do with my eyes to take my mind off what was happening behind them, I casually picked up something I knew I’d finished, maybe an Enid Blyton. Sure enough, I saw one of my stories.

Man, I was turning pages and finding out about missions, and it was a blast. Then I got comic books, Commando comics, from Britain. So I started making those. After a while, I learned that if I lined up the feelings in just the right way, I could do it in real-time and blow the minds of grown-ups.

Pretty much, I’ve been putting words in a straight line ever since. By day I help my friends publish best-selling nonfiction books. And by night, I do the laps of the once cowardly maker, no longer satisfied with being behind the scenes.