I wrote my first book at the innocent age of eleven, The Mystery of the Golden Football Trophy, as a class assignment. It was foolish to think how easy it was to write an actual book at such a young age... plot, characters, suspense—my spiral-bound gem had it all! Probably more so than some of my adult work, no doubt.

After becoming one of our school’s most well-read young authors, I grew infatuated with those who could write stories as equally amazing as mine, like John D. Fitzgerald with The Great Brain series, which led to swindling a lot of spare change from my classmates thinking I, too, had the greatest brain in school. Shortly after, it was A House with a Clock in Its Walls (the original) and the occult mysteries by John Bellairs which kept me hidden under the covers with a book light far past my bedtime. When our school invited John Bellairs to come speak and I got the chance to sit at the same small wooden table in our school library as my absolute favorite author in the world, I could hardly speak. That wooden table would never feel the same again.

A spark was born.

Naturally, subplots arose before I took to the world of publishing. (Enter B-roll montage.)

Being slightly taller than average and filled with the hubris of making the last spot on the junior varsity basketball team, I was hooked on playing professional basketball for the Boston Celtics, and for whatever reason equally hooked on traveling to outer space. Neither career panned out. (I was much too short, and space was much too far away to find a suitable date for the prom.) It became music, then, which caught my ear and never let it go. For two decades I plugged away at piano bars, dive bars, and every gig that came my way making a minor name for my band in the California indie rock scene, yet there was still a part of me that wasn’t fulfilled in a 45-minute set. I still had something more to say.

Throughout my years of gigging and touring I spent more time stranded in airports than I care to remember, and took to devising ways to keep myself entertained. Somehow I got it in my head that this might make for a great book, and fortunately my first publisher, Greenleaf Book Group, felt the same. Please Hug Me—I’ve Been Delayed: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need to Survive the Not-so-Friendly Skies was born, and became the near-overnight success that had alluded me for so many years.

I say near success because while my debut title was featured at Hudson News and Pacific Gateway retailers nationwide (something I was later told was reserved for books by Oprah and the like), and I was interviewed on NPR Weekend Edition and got to chat with folks at the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe, I still wasn’t Oprah (which is fair). It didn’t matter. I was published! I was now an official author like my one-time hero John Bellairs, and many others. Which also meant I now had an avenue to write about all the things I had been experiencing.

I’ve spent years working in an office supporting my music career, so I wrote about that.

I had a dear friend who passed away, so I wrote about him.

I’ve had some rather interesting dating stories, so I wrote about them.

I got into a beef with Josh Groban and Christmas, so I wrote about that.

I continued to offer travel advice and built a worldwide following on my blog until some lovely hackers rendered eight years of agonizing efforts in SEO inoperable.

Then, we had a child, and everything stopped.

Well, not everything—just the part where you get to do what you want when you want to do it… so I had to be creative. Bedtime became dada’s time to once again write stories. A few of them proved captive for our little one, so I decided to try my hand at publishing them in the hopes that others would enjoy them, too. Ultimately this led to the scariest moment of my career: my first school book reading.

Secretly, I suppose I hoped that my own child might become as enamored with the world of books as I did, and always find a home under the covers with his book light. Of course, if he finds his home under the lights of the NBA, or the stars out in space, I’m fine with that too.

I’m just here to show him the spark… which I realized has become my mission in life. (One more dramatic beat…)

None of this was ever something I set out to do. The more deeply I dove into the world of writing, the more I realized sometimes—most times, in fact, you aren’t the one in charge. I never thought I’d be a travel writer, or a comedic essayist, or a children’s book author. I thought I’d be a power forward in the NBA with a ninety-three percent free throw percentage. But those guys only get to play eighty-two games a year. I get to write every day.

Writing is what I love to do, and I hope others who find my work love to read what I’ve written as much as those books I discovered as a young child hiding under the blankets with his book light.

See, now, this tale has too many subplots, because I’ve got three endings. I said I love to write… editing, well, that’s another gig.