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Books have always been my great love. Now you´re probably picturing me at a romantic candlelight dinner for two with a Patricia Briggs novel on the opposite side of the table while I gaze at it adoringly. (Go on, laugh, but it´s not as far from the truth as it might be with some people.) Ever since I learned to read (I was four - the book was Bambi), I had some idea that I wanted to write my own stories. I wanted to share them with people.

When I was in first grade, we had Career Day at school. We got to pick what we wanted to do for a living from cards with job descriptions on them. I chose "freelance writer" because there was no card for "person who writes stories for a living". My teacher (Mrs. Johnson, I will so call you out now) said, rather condescendingly, "That's not a real job, honey. Why don't you pick something else?" That should've prepared me for the row I had to hoe.

I never did pick anything else.

When I was ten, I read all of the Tolkien books (but not the Simarillion), so I immediately began writing my own epic fantasy. It had a mighty young warrior, a foulmouthed dwarf, and a mysterious maiden (the love interest!) who could turn into mist after dark. Sadly, this incipient work of incredible genius (written in my Garfield notebook) fell victim to parental censorship (I blame the dwarf for cussing so much).

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I had a high opinion of the mainstream media when I worked at Hustler magazine. I recognized that what we produced at Hustler was mostly garbage, and believed that what was published in serious newspapers and magazines was both truthful and beneficial to the greater good. Journalistically speaking, I had low self-esteem.  My perception changed when I went to for Seth Warshavsky's Internet Entertainment Group, the subject of chapter nine, "Portrait of a Con Artist."  I'm not saying necessarily that my self esteem rose. But my esteem for the mainstream press plunged enough that eventually everything came into alignment, and I stopped comparing my work to that of all other journalists affiliated with respected institutions.

When I started working for Warshavsky he was a highly-regarded figure in the media.  The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and others hailed him as a visionary, a young man who had bested much larger enterprises by pioneering e-commerce. It didn't matter that he was a purveyor of "adult content." He was an innovator and besides, he reassured the press that porn was a stepping stone. Soon, he would turn his business into the Viacom of the Internet.