When I was eight, I wrote my first book — eighty‑seven pages, one paragraph, and a sci‑fi story called The Bird of Time. I handed it to my mother, hoping she’d read it. She didn’t even open it. She just said, “Nobody is ever going to read what you write.”I threw the book away. I didn’t throw away the writing.My mother struggled with addiction, and I was too young to understand that her words weren’t really about me. But they stuck. For decades, I wrote in secret — twent