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It's all Lyman Frank Baum's fault.

My first exposure to alternate universe fantasy was MGM's 1939 production of The Wizard of Oz.  When I found out it had been made from a book and that author L. Frank Baum had written others, I did not walk, I ran to the nearest library.

I was encouraged to read, which was good thing; it would have been hard to keep me from it.  It was, in fact, this reading habit that lead me to writing SomeWhen Over the RainClouds.

During the 1980s, I was a cab driver in north Seattle.  It was a very slow day in the taxi cab and I popped into a corner drugstore for a book to read.  Though the particulars are now vague, the cover caught my eye, title intrigued me, and the blurb on the back of the book got it to the cash register.

Never, but never, have I been so disappointed with a book.  Mind you I'm no prude, and in sword-and-sorcery books there simply must be some wenching, but this book went above and beyond the call of duty.  When I finished reading it --hoping as I turned each page that it would get better-- I knew two things for certain:

The contents of my bookshelves are representative of my eclectic tastes.  Besides a short list of underground comic books, there are, to date, 1044 books, ranging from Science Fiction and Fantasy, to books about Pacific Northwest History, The Fur Trade era, the Occult, contemporary Fix-it-Yourself manuals, World Religions, herbal medicines (both Old World and New), pre-industrial How-to books, a 1924 book of French-Canadian poetry, biographies for a number of dead people, a handful of Tony Hillerman mysteries, a smattering of English/[fill in the blank] dictionaries, a Chilton's manual for 1964-1967 Ford Mustang/Mercury Cougar, mythologies of assorted ethnic origins, and almost all the books written by L. Frank Baum.

It is, after all, his fault.

--Lisa M. Peppan