My sister was also a reader, she was a year younger than me, and she read – you know, in those days what we called [air quotes] the traditional girl, girl books, but I’d get bored if there wasn’t enough books in the house, so I’d go and pull her books. And one year for her birthday she’d be given the Black Stallion Collection because she was a horse lover, loved – she had little horse statuettes. And, it was a box set, you know, The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, the Black Stallion –
Anyway, book five I think was The Black Stallion and Satan, right? And I was looking at the box set and I was like [mumbles] I had no idea the Black Stallion went on these amazing metaphysical adventures, I’ve got to find out what this horse does to meet Satan. [chuckles] So I read the entire Black Stallion. The whole work – And I got really into it, I learned a lot about Arabians and Arabian horses and races, and all of these different things, and I was pretty upset to find out that Satan was just a red racehorse and was not a giant cool demon [chuckles] or something. But, yeah, I just read nonstop. To me, it was always interesting, and I followed in my dad’s footsteps because he loved science fiction and fantasy so much. He’d bring home adult sci-fi and fantasy, and after a while, as a kid, I was like, well, this has a spaceship on the cover, I’ll just read my father’s books, and so I read his science fiction and fantasy, and just kept with it.
Read all of the audio books I could on science fiction and fantasy, and then hit the wall, there were no more I could listen to, but I had the habit in place. So, I closed my eyes, and I thought, well, I’m going to have to keep listening. This is my favorite thing to do. So I stuck my hand out in my public library’s bookshelf, I said, “I’m going to listen to the first thing I touch.” and I hit the biggest spine on the wall, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and I was like, is this seriously about a sad bird? [chuckles]
Why is this bird so lonesome? But I said, I made a deal, and I checked it out, and I was immediately introduced to historical fiction, which changed everything, and that audio book section kind of opened the library for me, because I was comfortable there, that was how I liked to read, audio books. And because I was comfortable there I was willing to take risks and chances, jumped into historical fiction, which led to nonfiction, which now I’m a history writer. So, it all started from a parent who read aloud, and I got hooked on that listening while I drew.
