Douglas Bell is my pseudonym. My real name is Troy Porter. I took a pen name because I wanted a persona that gave me the freedom to write the stories that I was not seeing in the world. 

Over time I began to formulate a more profound understanding of the purpose of my first novel. At the completion of a leadership development fellowship, American Leadership Forum (ALF), I saw the importance of sharing my spiritual journey and my allyship with all marginalized communities.

I grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Houston, Texas. My consciousness of God came from my black Baptist church upbringing. I attended predominately white private catholic non-coed schools until high school graduation. I attended the University of Texas at Austin and found myself lost because I did not know how or where I fit in on the college campus. I'd spent so much time with a few black friends and around white people all my adolescent years that I felt out of place when my white friends (who attended UT with me) ignored me. I no longer had my close buddies. I had to teach myself how to be "black." After college, I got my first job and my first real girlfriend. Life was good. But, like anything in life, there are two sides to every coin. We came from two different places and saw our relationship differently. We were getting a divorce three years later, and I learned our second child was not my biological child. This was the start of my spiritual journey.

I was broken - financially and spiritually - sitting inside Barnes and Nobles when I came across a book written by the Dalai Lama about happiness. Happiness seemed so foreign to me at that time. I knew something was wrong; I never realized that I was more than unhappy. I was depressed. I went back to that bookstore every day to read more of the Dalai Lama's words which opened me to the spiritual teachings of Buddhism. Those teachings were grounded in day-to-day realities and did not ask me to just have faith. The spiritual teachings provided me with a roadmap to understand my own karma. The roadmap: The Four Nobles Truths, Eightfold Path of Enlightenment, and Sutra studies are the markers to the inner journey.