I oddly enough know the exact day I became a writer, almost the exact hour. I had no intention of writing fiction, not in the 35 years proceeding, nor in that moment. My total creative writing efforts had included two terrible short stories and my resume. In the meanwhile, I had climbed the corporate ladder until I was flying to three cities a week and my little two-person company was consulting to the Fortune 100 on IT-infrastructure redevelopment. I had it all, until the moment when I had nothing. In four months I lost the business, the career, any desire to continue in the career, my house, and finally my furniture and car. Actually I sold the last three because I’d found the solution to my burn-out mid-life crisis. The solution was to set off around the world on a bicycle… Okay, well, it made sense at the time. Four months had seen me from having two houses, four cities, and all that noise, to sitting on a bicycle. Suddenly I could pick up my life with one hand, tent and kitchen included with nowhere to sleep that night but somewhere down the road. Four more months saw me on…