The first thing I want you to do is change lives, starting with your own

(Stop thinking like a consumer and start thinking like a producer.)

When I was 12 years old I found a young-adult book called Rumble Fish.

I read the book and I was blown away.

I thought “this is the first book I've ever read that really understands my situation “.

After I read the book, I read the “about the author” section to find out about the author.

The author was named S. E. Hinton but I couldn't find much more information about him.

S. E. Hinton was a total mystery to me but I loved his writing.

I started reading all the S. E. Hinton books I could get my hands on.

The Outsiders, That Was Then This is Now, Tex.

They were good, but none of them had the impact that Rumble Fish had on me.

I tried to find out about S. E. Hinton but I couldn't find much. This was 1994, way before the internet was common.

It was perhaps a year after I read Rumble Fish that I found out more about S. E. Hinton and I was a little surprised at what I found.

S. E. Hinton stood for…

Susan Eloise Hinton.

HUH?!

She went by the name S. E. Hinton instead of Susan Hinton because the publisher thought that boys would not read a book written by an author named Susan.

(They were right, I never would have read it if it was written by Susan Hinton and not S. E. Hinton).

Going by S. E. Hinton instead of Susan Hinton was a genius move.

The name became larger than life and mysterious at the same time.

Who was this S. E. Hinton?

S. E. Hinton was an enigma. S. E. Hinton was larger than life and a ghost at the same time. S. E. Hinton was mythical.

It gets better…

Not only was S. E. Hinton a girl, she was 15 years old when she wrote her first book – The Outsiders.

That's amazing, I thought. Not that she was a woman, but that she was so young.

When I solved the riddle of S. E. Hinton I was so inspired to write because she had written such a great book and she was a teenager, just like me.

She was a teenager living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was a teenager living in Wichita, Kansas.

I wanted to write, and she did write.