I’ve always had an active, some might say over-active, imagination. I learned to read at three, and since my younger brother is six years younger than I, in a way I was similar to an only child. I’ve always been shy and I have spent a lot of my life alone with a book.

I first tried to write a novel when I was 15, a science fiction book set in an alternate reality. I wrote about a dozen pages with a pencil. I kept it for years, occasionally comi...