Unearthing the Buried 

While poetry has been my favourite medium for most of my life, there was a period when my focus was on writing short stories. Shortly before a long enforced break from writing, I even focussed exclusively on short stories. Fortunately, I returned to writing through the strong influence of music lyrics, but never again felt "ready" to write anything longer than a handful of verses. 

That changed when I heard a song by "The National" called "Carin at the Liquor Store" in which Matt Berninger mentions John Cheever. Curious as to whom Matt is talking about, I did a quick read and not long after, a copy of "The Stories of John Cheever" landed on my desk.

It was an eye-opening experience, and although it took a while, I found myself creating more and more elaborate scenarios in my head. A mixture of "I can't let these ideas go to waste", "I want to express my feelings and thoughts in a longer format" and wistfulness about the years I'd already spent doing this was enough to almost convince me.

The final push came when I had to face the reality that the binary of my gender had been in question for some time and I decided to come out. To help those around me understand, and of course to help me make sense of what was happening in a structured way, I decided to write "Life in a Strange Paradise".

As the project proved to be a success, I decided to give more space to similar works.