I was born at a very young age, a miraculous achievement, I’m told , in a charmingly dusty little town somewhere in Africa, the kind of place where donkeys outnumber streetlights and everyone knows your business before you've even had a chance to live it. My childhood smelled like mango trees, sun-warmed books, and the occasional goat.
From the very beginning, I had a deep spiritual calling… to the local library. Yes, while other kids went to actual church, I worshipped at the altar of ink and paper. My saints were librarians, my prophets were authors, and my high priests were a few spectacular English teachers who somehow managed to spot promise in a kid who once thought "onomatopoeia" was a tropical disease.
I read like my life depended on it, novels, comics, cereal boxes, shampoo bottles, bus tickets, anything with words. Sci-fi, history, fantasy, romance, even the occasional out-of-date encyclopedia (which is how I once ended up thinking Pluto was a major planet and that fax machines were the future). Stories were my lifeblood, and it wasn't long before I decided to make some of my own.
I started writing short stories in high school, dramatic tales of teenage rebellion, alien love affairs, and talking cats with drinking problems. University didn’t cure me of this affliction. If anything, it made it worse. I wrote during lectures, in the cafeteria, once even in the middle of a rugby match (we lost, but the plot twist in chapter three was phenomenal).
These days, when I'm not hunched over a keyboard like a caffeinated gremlin, I dabble in science, philosophy, psychology, and the art of convincing myself that listening to entire albums on loop counts as “research.” You'll usually find me haunting the back corner of a coffee shop, sipping a cappuccino like it holds the secret to the universe, plotting my next literary adventure, and silently judging the spelling on the chalkboard menu. If you see me, come say hi. I might even write you into the next story…