I was one of those kids who loved to write stories in school, from an early age. I filled notebook after notebook with crazy stories, mostly (no surprise here) about family life. Even at that age I wasn’t writing science fiction or fantasy. I was writing about things that happen in families. My mother kept all these notebooks–at that time we wrote in big fat rectangular ones with huge line spaces–and one of my favourite opening lines is: “One night, when I was going to the bathroom, I met my father.” Who runs into their father going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I guess I once did. He was probably up late, worrying about some adult problem. In my stories, I’d get kidnapped and taken off to cages–there really were none in the neighbourhood I grew up in–but someone, often my father, would rescue me. I wrote a lot about fights with friends because I had plenty of those. One reason was that I was the only one of my friends who wasn’t Greek and my friends would all speak Greek, so I felt very left out. I think many writers feel they are always on the outside, looking in, and that experience was early training in that position, I guess. So, the desire to write was inside me very early on, as it is with most writers. My teachers were always so impressed with my stories that I received praise and you know that praise can be addictive. When you get a bit, you always want more. If you’re good at something, why not do it?