I'm not sure what it is that compels people to write stories, but I am convinced that writers are born, not made.

We had two books in our home when I was a child. One was a book on childhood illnesses, and the second was an encyclopedia, L-N, given by the local grocery store if you spent twenty dollars or more. I didn't care for either book and had no idea that other kinds of books existed-fiction books, books that could transport you into other times, other lives, other minds. And though I had not yet learned to print or spell, I still felt compelled to write. With no paper or writing implements at my disposal, I carried sticks into my room and scribbled on my unfinished walls. I was convinced that hundreds of years later, some advanced beings would buy the house, tear down the walls, and with eyes and minds advanced far beyond ours, use their ability to see invisible ink and to decipher the meaning soaked into a child's scribbles, to read the stories and secrets I'd left there.

Years passed before I discovered the magic of fiction, and even more years passed before I dared to admit that I had a dream to become a published novelist. Granted, there was nothing to prove to me that I could do it if I tried. I'd always been a poor student, more involved with my inner world than the facts written on the chalkboard. I skipped college, married at seventeen, became a mother at eighteen, and spent years living in an isolated town in the northwoods of Wisconsin, population 249. What possibly made me believe that I could one day prop my book alongside the hundreds of books that now filled my book shelves? Nothing, it seemed, but a resoluteness that said that if I practiced long enough, and tried hard enough, I could dream my dream true.

The night before I began Carry Me Home, I was looking through the photographs my recently deceased father had taken while serving in the Pacific during WWII. The images of the dead soldiers strung across the battlefield, as well as the images of my father standing with his arms linked across the shoulders of two young men he had identified simply as "my buddies," haunted me after I turned in that night. At that time, it seemed likely that we were going to war in Iraq, and as a mother of a teenage boy and an aunt to draftable nephews,

I felt anxious. What, I wondered, would it be like to send your beloved son, husband, or boyfriend off to war, and what would it be like for all of you once they returned?

The next morning, I woke before dawn with this question in mind and began writing. A mother, father, and family hero who would go off to war emerged. Five minutes later, the unlikely voice of Earl "Earwig" Gunderman spoke, and one paragraph into the book, I knew that this was the novel that would give me my dream.

People often ask me how I managed to write from the point of view of a brain-damaged teenaged boy. I'm not quite sure, except to say that when I strip away all I know about human nature, psychology, and logic, Earwig's questions about life, death, religion, war, prejudice, and love are my own. I guess this is why I love writing so much. It is my chance to wonder out loud.

So welcome to my world, oh intelligent being. I hope you enjoy my scribblings.

My best,

Sandra Kring