Expressions of Myself: Poems, Short Stories, and Other Ramblings

In late 1981, I was awakened at about 2:00 in the morning with the first half of a little poem chasing itself around in my mind. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it wouldn't go away. I finally got up, found a scrap of paper and a pencil, wrote down what I had been given so far, and went back to sleep. When I woke up later that morning, the rest of the poem was waiting for me to write down, which resulted in my one and only children's book, "A Tiger Tale or A Tale about a Tiger's Tail."

I have made many attempts to write poems and other stuff over the years, beginning in high school. Most ranged from amateurish to pathetic. This little children's poem was the first time something had just "come to me." It remained part of my "not worth publishing" collection until my wife kept "encouraging" me to publish it.

I did keep trying to write, and I now have 13 published books. When you can escape into the written word, it exercises your mind and trains your imagination to think beyond what you see. Only by reading can you go anywhere you want to go, be anything you want to be, and do anything you want to do.