I was off and running. After getting that A+ in fourth grade, I was hooked. I submitted myself to constant bombardment of Universal Classic Monster movies and 1950’s “Big Bug” science fiction films. Whenever I had free time — which is to say whenever I wasn’t at school, doing homework, or riding my bike with my childhood friend — I was watching monster movies or writing horror short stories.

Most of my stories only ran three or four pages. That was okay by me. I was just having fun, telling and retelling quickly paced, poorly worded stories about Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy. Hey, I was about eleven years old. At least I knew a sentence needed both a subject and a predicate, and I knew the difference between a noun and a pronoun. So I was happy with it.

As weeks turned into months, the page count slowly started to tick up. Within a year, most of my stories ran an average of about six pages. Bear in mind, I was writing by hand in blue ink on wide-rule notebook paper. This was 1971 or 72. This was long before laptops, word processors; this was an age when electric typewriters were the tool of businesses and the status symbol of wealthy individuals. So in addition to practicing the mechanics of the craft (letters create words, words create paragraphs, paragraphs create stories, and stories communicate emotions and convey thoughts and feelings), my cursive penmanship improved simply due to sustained repetition.

When I finished a story, I stapled the pages together down the left side so the pages could be leafed through like any both book. Three staples only. I had no cover. The thought never occurred to me. The top page was the first page of the story. The title squatted, centered on the top line followed by name immediately underneath. Then skip two lines, indent a quarter inch, and start the story.

My desk was of sturdy pine. Constructed with a wide flat top and ample leg room underneath on the left, the right side sported three (count ’em! THREE!) drawers. The top and middle drawers were identical, each about nine inches wide, and two or three inches deep. The bottom drawer, however, was three times deeper, a full six to nine inches deep.

After Operation Stapler had been successfully completed, I opened the bottom drawer n my desk and consigned my new literary creation to its gloomy bowels. Over time, they started to pile up. By summer, that deep bottom drawer was almost half full.

Prior to this, my summers had been comprised of riding bikes, climbing trees, and convincing my Mom to take me to the swimming pool. Now, all I wanted to do was sit at the desk and write every day, and watch TV when I got tired of writing. Even then, I somehow knew that every writer has to take a break and recharge the creative batteries.

But a true seminal moment, a moment that was going to change my life forever, was right around the corner.