Since my mother read me bedtime stories – tales of hobbits, centaurs, faeries, aliens, and witches – I have learned the rhythm of fantasy fiction. I speak the absurd, revel in the music of madness, and totally believe that we are not alone. As a child, my make-believe was dramatic and detailed. As an adult, it was conjured into reality, by way of reckless abandon and bottles labeled, “Drink Me”.

I read everything. From cereal boxes to Dante’s Inferno, I read whatever was available to me at any given moment. I did the same with music. I could predict lyrics based on the rhyme scheme, so people would wonder how I “could possibly already know the words to a brand new song?!” often. Not so with the titles of the songs, however. Therein lies my weakness.

‘What is the point?’ you ask. ‘Why does this matter?’ Well, add genetic and environmental training in visual art, some attention deficit diagnostics, and a couple/few/handful of trauma stories, and you’ve got an author and illustrator of an unfinished collection of short stories about a land where the shores are lined with pearls and creatures in the sky meditate everything into existence.

So there.

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