When I was much younger, and life was very difficult, my imagination needed to take my mind off that dark world around me, and fired up and fueled a great many stories.

The pre-teen years were not those in which I wrote anything beyond those school assignments, but I remember the desire to read and, in doing so, imagine it could inhabit those idyllic worlds.

When I was old enough and in the first years of secondary school, the subjects we learned helped expand that imagination; some wanted to be someone different, to be somewhere else, anywhere but home.

I remember reading books about boarding school in England and somehow thought that would be better than what I had here.  That notion of self-sufficiency and navigating those younger years in such an environment would be fun.

Of course, later on, I realised the reality of that sort of life, and it was just as horrible as I had already.

It didn’t stop me from wanting to be in a rich family living in a large house and having a whole estate to play in.  It didn’t matter that it might not be the truth, just that it was different.

As I transitioned out of school, now having discovered I could write and translate those dreams into stories, I embarked on a university degree that majored in Narrative, which was writing, and journalism, which, in combining the two, provided three years of writing experience.

In other words, from an early age, I used writing as a means of survival and later as a channel for my creative whim.  I never expected that I would write a book, not in those early years, just that the scribbles on paper would eventually become something.

Yes, I wanted to have a perfect relationship, but I soon realised that there really isn’t one. Writing about it and trying to create perfection, I discovered a lot of interesting lessons and everything that can go wrong, as usual.

Yes, I wanted to be a spy, and watched, ready and studied as much as I could, and discovered that Spies don’t live a charmed life; they are always teetering on the edge of life and death.

Yes, I wanted to be a billionaire and live a charmed and successful life, but it mostly didn’t happen, and the newspaper pages are littered with the death and ruination of a great many privileged souls.

Others struggle.  My father always said life wasn’t meant to be easy.  I soon learned that in my imagination and my stories, it could.