When my child got severely injured, I refused to leave her again. I carried her on a front harness with me. Then, in 1992, I moved back to Philadelphia and saw an essay contest in Essence magazine—10 pages for $2,500 if you won. I thought, why not? So I sat down to write a thriller, a sexy suspense, something that I’d want to see in the movies, rather than the tale of woe I was living. Three days later I had 75 pages done. I’m firmly convinced that I poured my imagination onto the page because it had been the first time, since the accident happened in January 1991, that I found myself laughing and excited about something. I came to that story each day, and for just a little while I had a place to escape to...I was lucky that writing was there. It came through like the cavalry.