I can't ever remember a time when I didn't know how to read or write. My childhood home was full of books, which never struck me as abnormal until I ventured into the homes of my friends; the absence of books was loud.
My mother recently told me about one Christmas, when I was about five or six. My mother and the other women in the neighbourhood had a habit of giving gifts to each others children, and this particular year my mum gave one of the other little girls a book. The audacity of her! From the way the girl reacted, you'd think she'd just received a bottle of poison or the decapitated head of a Tiny Tears doll. I can't remember anything about the incident, but my mum assures me that the girl hurled the book across the room with disgust, and a cry of 'I don't like books!'. When my mother approached the girl's mother about it, all she received was a shrug of the shoulders and a bemused reply of 'We don't have books in our house.'
My point is, my love of books, which to this day is still the best gift my own mother has ever given me, was abnormal amongst my peers. It still is. I read that the average person reads between 4 and 8 books a year putting my reading habits (between 2 and 3 a week, unfortunately nowhere near my page-guzzling 10 a week during my early teen years) far outside of the norm. I live, breathe, eat, sleep, and try to write books.
This blog is my attempt to document my life-long love affair with the written word, and act as a place to record my progress as I continue writing my struggling ass of a novel. My hope is to connect with other writers out there, both published and not, and find some common ground. My aim isn't to preach or instruct, because I don't feel I have experience enough to do either. It is simply my personal journey. Welcome to my world!
