My love of Tolkien dates back to my youth the late 1960s. I love the stuff of myth and legend (and what it reveals about the human psyche), the Iliad, Shakespeare, all kinds of history, Latin American magical realism, especially, but not limited to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I majored in English at the University of California Berkeley where I focused on early English literature and the history of that rich linguistic soup that is the English language. I hope my past obsessions over the decades with Henry James, Jane Austin, James Joyce, and so many other writers I have loved, will bring some depth to my humble attempts to entertain myself and others within the Tolkien fan fiction genre.