Still the Black Leopards

It all began with Sumatra. The short story was "The Jungle." The author was an obviously original storyteller who searched the globe for simply someplace faraway with a unique name and assumed that leopards lived there. Black leopards.
But maybe it began earlier...
I can remember two specific events that seemed to have occurred at nearly the same time. I discovered a book in my room (something remarkable only a child can really experience) and read poetry for apparently enough time that I calculate it as hours in my mind. And it was as others have described before: something lit a match in my head and illuminated what I previously perceived as darkness -- and my eyes are still adjusting. I caught my first glimpse of what C.S. Lewis calls "Joy." But "heaven gives its glimpses to those not in position to look too close."
And soon thereafter I was sitting with the other children, listening to the library lady read with incredible animation. She mentioned something about a writing contest and there again a matched scratched -- someone once compared it to the change from black-and-white to technicolor -- and I've never stopped writing since.
"The Jungle"was soon followed by "The Darkness," with certainly enough revisions to make me appear wonderfully prolific (always such an innocent deceiver, I was). But I kept writing; I kept reading. And I don't know whether everyone eventually feels that sudden breeze from an unseen valley, whether we all come to the same conclusion about writing. But the idea that I could create is what pushed me (and pushes me) to perfect a style of my own, and share it with those who will listen.