Growing up with an alcoholic mother and an angry father will teach you very quickly to find a way to escape reality. Like most kids before the internet, I gravitated toward books about dragons and space and magic and everything else a boy would be interested in. I didn’t read a lot, though — where my time was mostly spent was in coming up with stories of my own.

Writing has always been a way for me to cope with life’s uncertainties and process how I am feeling. In high school, where the tidal...