When I was twelve, they told me I was stupid and prescribed "smart pills" (aka, Ritalin) to wrestle my brain into a state of submission. I fed them to my Rottweiler, Zeus. They worked like a charm. When I was twenty-one, they told me I'd never amount to anything, so I took my daughter, moved to a new state, and self-published a book of poetry...which I sold from behind the bar where I mixed drinks and hustled tips. When I was twenty-five, my college GPA was an abysmal 0.0 so I dropped out, wrote my first (of four) novels in two and a half months, and landed on the Essence magazine bestseller list seven separate times--including the #1 spot. Today, nobody calls me "stupid"--and I live to tell the tale.
