My first rejection as a writer came from a Reader’s Digest editor. I was eleven years old, living in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. My English teacher, Mr. Upzack, sent a note home asking my parents if he could submit my homework assignment to the publication. It didn’t go well. The following year we moved to a homestead in northwest Montana, and I learned to play guitar on my mother’s 12-string Epiphone.

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