I was ten when I penned my first novella, 'Revenge,' on the back of stock certificates tossed out by my mother. My journey to a writing career was anything but conventional. I sold teddy bears on the streets of Johannesburg, worked at a dolls’ hospital, ran a missing persons’ bureau, made cane furniture, and spent two years as a law clerk – all before the age of 21. When I joined the Johannesburg ‘Star,’ my first published article was an op-ed piece, ‘Happiness is an Unprejudiced Mind.’ My newspaper and magazine career spanned three continents. Along the road, I was editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest’s South African edition. A move to the Digest’s U.S. headquarters led to a two-year assignment with James A. Michener on his South African novel, 'The Covenant.' Commenting on our work together, Michener said: “Uys showed such a mastery and predilection for plotting that again and again he came up with dazzling ideas that again and again attracted my attention, often proposing something so far from my intention that I was bedazzled.” I devoted five years to the writing of 'Brazil.' I spent a year on my research traveling extensively in Brazil, where I journeyed 15,000 miles, almost exclusively by bus. My original manuscript penned by hand reached a staggering 750,000 words. My non-fiction book, ‘Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression’ tells the story of a quarter million boxcar boys and girls roaming America in the 1930s. Now a United States citizen, I live in Boston, Massachusetts, with my wife, Janette, whom I met in a Johannesburg park, when I was six years old and not quite ready to begin selling teddy bears!