I don’t have the same story as many writers. I didn’t grow up loving books and loving to read.

I was (and still am) a really slow reader.

I didn’t like much of what I read, possibly because it wasn’t my thing, or possibly because it was forced on me.

When my sisters were deep into Pride and Prejudice, I didn’t get it.

I didn’t connect with characters or stories.

It made me feel on the outside of something everyone else “got.”

I don’t believe it was because I was incapable. When I watched the Matrix for the first time, I felt Neo. I walked out the room thinking I could fly (or my equivalent of it).

Then I was reading so much science, so many journal articles, that my brain had no room for anything other than those technical, blunt words.

Until…

I had someone in my life who questioned why I never tried reading anything that matched to my other interests. He was one who had read for his entire life. He took the time to make suggestions based on what he knew about me.

Slowly—and not without some missteps—I’ve come to find what appeals to me as a reader.

Along the way, something interesting happened. My whack, abstract-thinking inventor brain that was always trying to push others to think differently had an idea for a weird little story of people who have no chance to fit in because their minds are temporally displaced.

I started to write in May of 2019 with little idea what I was doing, with nothing pushing other than the nuance of the characters that sketched themselves out in my mind with little of my own effort. The blank page called to me, and so, I answered.

I found a new passion that checked so many boxes for what I care to do in life. I’ve pushed all my chips to the middle of the table towards being an author and not because I’ve always read or always loved books.

But because I didn’t, and I want to create characters that people who don’t connect to those at the center of the Bell curve can see themselves in.

(See graph below for reminder of what a Bell curve is.)

This is why I write. For the misfits, for the outliers, for those who struggle to find their place.