My name is Dallas Dwayne Conn. I am almost fifty years old. I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I have written a lot of stories, and as soon as I got them done, I would go throw them out in the trash. They were mine, and I really didn't care to show them to anyone. I felt that they were private and belonged to no one but me. I could always find a way to become anyone and anything. For me, it was a way to hide out from the real world. There you could become a superstar or a slave, even a man or a woman. I never knew who or what I was going to be, until I sat down and started to write. I love the fact that as long as I was writing the story, no one else's opinion really mattered. I was in full control of my own world. There was no one that could tell me what to do in that world but myself. I had been doing this for my whole life. It was how I made sense of the world that we live in. When I am writing, I can become anybody or anything. I wrote all types of books from love stories to slasher books. "The more blood, the better" was what my son would say. I was just a big nobody, and until I accepted that, I just had a lot of stories bouncing around in my mind. Then one day, I put an idea on paper. That was that; I was hooked! I knew that my writing was how I could go anywhere and be anybody. It set me free, you could say. My mother told me not to listen to what people said about me but to give them something to talk about. That way, they could say what they wanted to say, but if they told the truth, you were the one in control and happy. People always will talk. The key is to control what they are talking about. If it is the truth, then it is good news, but people don't like to talk about good news as much as they like to talk about the bad news. All that you have to do is listen only to what you want. You can zone the whole world out, at least the part you don't like, and rewrite it the way it should have been to start with. That is what makes you you and them them. I never knew what she meant when she said that to me, until I met and married my better half. Her name is Cassandra M. Lewis; now she is a Conn. That name never did me any good, so I gave it to her for her last name. That was thirty years ago. She taught me how to be me. That sounds funny, but without her pushing me to write and quit throwing the stories away, you would have never met me. I will always be in her debt for that. I want to dedicate this book to her and my mother, Thelma Conn. My mother was my first teacher, and my wife is still teaching me. They are the two that made me into the man that I am today. If you don't like it, you can take it up with them. I am disabled now and always in pain, except when I am writing. I can escape by taking myself anywhere in the world that I want to go. I don't even have to leave the house to do so. Remember, it only takes you and your imagination. So don't let anyone stop you from traveling the world. Thank you.
