When I was little, I had trouble sleeping. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw the gray walls and shelters, heard explosions and screaming and had to open my eyes again. My nightmares were full of beetles with armor and dragonflies with machine guns. Every night I woke up sweaty and scared and had to get up and knock on my parents' bedroom door. After a while I started reading comics to unwind. I was maybe five years old when I was up ‘till late turning the pages of Tintin comic books without really able to follow the action. After a while I learned to read some of the words and eventually I could read real books even before I started school. But it also had another effect. The books and stories enabled me to sleep. And instead of dreaming about war and misery, I dreamed of mad captains, vampires and colorful creatures that lived in small huts in the forest. A little more fun than nightmares. 

After a while I began to wonder who these people whose names were printed on backs of books were. I was curious to see what they looked like and to learn why they wrote books. Stephen King, Jules Verne, Anne Rice, and Franz Kafka. How do they sleep at night? Whose bedroom door did they knock on when they had nightmares? When I was a few years older, I decided that I would be one of them. I would become a writer. It was the best job I could imagine. To sit and write stories that served as escape capsules for children with nightmares. Small literary sleeping pills for people who had trouble sleeping because of nightmares. I could help them dare to close their eyes. I had writers, cartoonists and Tintin to thank for enabling me to sleep. Therefore, I would become a writer myself.