From a young age, I liked telling elaborate, sometimes exaggerated stories. In the sixth grade, I owned and operated a French restaurant in the tomato gardens of our schoolyard. I even wrote a menu: tomato salad, mud-pie, pebble stew, and tomato juice with parsley to garnish. The Tomato Bouquet was not a real restaurant, of course. Since then, I have written short stories, published essays, tried my hand at photography, and drawn landscapes and animals. All this as a way to explain the world around me. As a creative, I tell stories the way a kid would: detailed, expressive, and playful.