Roger Canaff is a former prosecutor and current consultant and legal expert on special victims issues, born in New York City and raised in Northern Virginia.Stephen King once dedicated a novel to his children with the words "Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie." That's a beautiful sentiment, and Roger suspects that when he reflects on the gifts in his life, the gift of simple storytelling, either a story he's enjoyed or one he's told, ranks as high as any.The reality of sexual abuse in early childhood drove him, in a way, to what he considered a calming distance from the concept of truth. But in boomerang fashion he returned to it with a vengeance and became a special victims prosecutor in the late 1990s, a career he loved dearly and still takes part in as a trainer and consultant.Like many who write, he probably has little choice. There's magic in the ability to tell a tale; he's known this since he was a toddler. Truth telling, in particular, is power, a disarming, vivacious force. He told that to the victims he worked with, hundreds of them, mostly children, when preparing them for testimony. From their shared memories and his own, he has created fiction that he believes is the very essence of myth: every bit the truth inside the lie.He's blessed with a loving wife, a beautiful nephew, and the best childhood friends, still steadfast after 40 years, that he could have asked for to help pull him through. Newer friends have appeared and decorated his life in layered ways he never thought possible. He believes in a God and still practices as a left-leaning Catholic, although with strong Deist tendencies. Lately his most tempting image of God is one of a frustrated artist and the cosmos a palette. Magnificent. But still striving.It's a joy-filled, messy thing. He can only smile ear to ear at the chance to be a part of it, every day, until the last one meets him. Until then, he'll tell stories. Thanks for reading this one.