Born and raised in farming communities, Arthur Selent experienced his parents' separation, was raised by grandparents, lived in penthouse apartments and worked in factories and the stock market, became homeless and spent seventeen years hitchhiking across North America, worked seasonal orchard and tourist jobs (often trading work for a bed), traveled three years by bicycle through Alberta and British Columbia while collecting cans to survive, lived in vans, created and sold postcard artwork, and later restarted writing via social media - experiences that ultimately led him to write Mind Tickles.