In the meanwhile, I continued writing. During the years 1991-1992 I began my tenure at Thundermist Middle School where, in the sixth grade, in January of 1992, I took part in a contest for young authors. The story I wrote revolved around the exploits of my beloved pet lizard Spiky: in fact, the name of this story was “The Adventures of Spiky.” To make a long story short, my story won. This wasn’t the first time I had won it: earlier, in the second grade, I had won the award as well, for an adaptation of the Frosty the Snowman tale I had written that year (and by adaptation I mean that I had added in myself and my family members as characters). In the summer of 1993 (the summer before I entered the eighth grade, which was my last year of middle school), for my 13th birthday, one of my aunts gave me, as a gift, a 130 page hardbound blank book. In some ways this was one of the greatest gifts that I ever received, and that summer I wrote my first novel in that blank book, the name of this novel being The Hole of Doom, book one in the so-called “Adventure Series” (I only ever wrote one other book in that series). The plot was some nonsense about a magical hole being discovered on the side of a mountain in Montana, and how a government spy is sent into this hole to investigate, and how he discovers an entire subterranean kingdom both inside and beneath the mountain, and how he finds himself getting tangled up in a bizarre war between the peaceful mountain-dwellers and the evil snakes (who, despite their name, are actually more like dragons). Dwarves figure into the equation as well because of course they do.
In the eighth grade my English teacher was very supportive and encouraging about my writing and for the first time I began to see myself as a writer, with dreams of one day being published. It had taken me 13 years, but I had finally taken my first steps onto the road to Er.
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