BOOK COVER Magazine - February 2014 | Page 6

Cover Feature Story Meet Bestselling Author and NAACP Image Award Nominee Victoria Christopher Murray BY JAMES L. KING | Photos Rochelle Scott Design and Photography JAMES L. KING: WHERE DID YOU GROW UP? VCM: In New York. Queens, to be exact. I grew up there before the rappers got there. JAMES L. KING: When did you first discover you had a talent to write? VCM: I knew I wanted to write when I was very young. I wrote my first masterpiece when I was just seven years old. It was called Betty and the Witch and I plagiarized all the stories I'd ever heard. Betty and the Witch had a girl in a red suit, three bears, three pigs, seven little people, a good witch, a bad witch and I wrote music that sounded an awful lot like the songs I'd learned in kindergarten. It was a hit because the entire second grade performed it as a play! JAMES L. KI 9