From the opening pages of my debut manuscript, Son of Lion, hear me roar.

 

My mother knew exactly what she was doing when she named me Leon. She understood the old meaning of the word — lion — and the strength she did not foresee I would one day need. She was choosing a force. A warning. A future. Without realising it, she gave me a name built for survival long before anyone understood I would have to survive.

Lions in old stories are not noble. They are exiled, hunted, starved, pushed to the edge of the world and left to make their own way back. They return marked, scarred, changed. They learn to stand in their own light because no one else will hold it for them. I didn’t know any of this as a child.

This book is the story of growing into the name my mother chose and the man I became. Not through inheritance, but through fire. Not through protection, but through the absence of it. Every version of my name — every set of initials, every identity I wore to stay alive — was a step toward the moment I understood what it meant to make my own roar.

I am not my father’s son. I am no one’s son. I am the lion I became.