First Rejection

A school assignment to write and illustrate a twenty-five-page story sent me into raptures. I labored long and hard over an historical bodice ripper about a Scottish lassie named Alison. Her true love joined Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army to defeat the English, and he died tragically on the battlefield in her arms. To this day I am haunted by Miss Mowat’s scrawled comment across my ‘book’ that she hoped I did not intend to write for a living.