The odds of being hit by a meteorite are astronomically small, but that is where this story begins.
As a teenager, I was on holiday in Tenerife. I sat out on the hotel balcony one warm August night, watching the Perseid meteor shower light up the night sky. I had never seen shooting stars so bright or abundant in my life and settled in for a night of stargazing.
As I laid back on the white plastic lounge chair, craning my neck up to watch the show, I felt a sharp pain on my thigh. Looking around for an insect to blame for interrupting my tranquillity, I saw a small black rock on the terracotta tiled floor beside me.
'That wasn't there a minute ago, was it?' I asked myself.
Picking it up, I noticed it looked charred, like a miniature lump of coal that had fallen from a barbecue. I got up, looking for a plant pot or something that would explain the pea-sized black rock in my palm. Nothing matched it. That's when the brightest shooting star of the night streaked across the sky, disappearing beyond the horizon.
It couldn't be, could it?
Shooting stars are anything from fragments of asteroids to particles the size of a grain of sand, burning up as they pass through our atmosphere and tonight, there were hundreds of these celestial visitors passing right above me.
Without another explanation for the pain radiating through my thigh, I sat back down and squeezed my fist around the small rock and watched its friends fall to the earth.
Almost half a lifetime later, on Christmas Day, I get a phone call from my Dad.
"Your Grandad has had a stroke."
I spent the day alone in my art studio, waiting for updates and trying to process the news. Finally, I got the call that night that he had passed. After refusing the paramedics offer of going to the hospital, he died in his own bed, stubborn and proud to the end.
The next day, we drove to my Grandparents house in Whitstable, England, to help my Grandma and do the things I suppose you have to do when a family member passes. Grieve, support, tell stories, remember the good times.
My Grandad was always a bit of a mystery to me. He was a heavily tattooed former Navy man, but I only really knew him as the man who would write poems and draw his grandkids bespoke, personalised birthday cards every year. We weren't a close family, seeing them only once, maybe twice a year, but when I did, I wanted to know about his tattoos, art, and poems. I wanted his stories.
I didn't realise just how many stories he had until he was gone and we found a locked suitcase under his bed. Upon opening it, we discovered a treasure trove of beautifully handwritten notepads containing stories, poetry, lyrics, diaries and more. We knew he wrote birthday cards for us, but this was a surprise for all of us to find.
Why was it hidden, locked away without telling anyone what he was creating?
The only answer I can come up with is one that made me sadder than his actual passing. He was afraid to share them for fear of judgement or ridicule. His pride overshadowed the storyteller he kept locked inside, only allowing glimpses of his true self to emerge to make his grandkids smile once a year on their birthdays.
I left the next day to travel home, determined to find a way to honour him and not let his legacy stay locked away in a suitcase. If he was too afraid to share his storytelling with the world, then maybe I could do it in his honour. I was already following in his footsteps in some capacity by embracing my artistic side and pursuing a career in that, so maybe I also could write like he did. Perhaps I had a storytelling gene in me too. Only one way to find out.
Over the following weeks, I started putting ideas together on what kind of story I could tell. Ever since that summer holiday when I was hit by a shooting star, I had been fascinated by meteorites. It's the kind of thing Stan Lee would be proud of writing, and it seemed like the perfect theme to create a story around.
By the time I went to my Grandads funeral, The Prism was already being created, and I was able to smile, knowing that his legacy would have a chance to live through me. To have the name Simmons printed on a book and released for people to read and enjoy will be as much for my Grandad as it is for me.
The universe chose to touch me with that small black rock. Something astronomically rare sparked this idea, and my grandad gave me the fuel to help light the fire that grew to become The Prism.
After a long, extraordinary, twisting road to get here, I am proud to say that I am now a storyteller like my Grandad.