From: rgawel at penton.com <rgawel>
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 15:11:21 -0400

I don't think my story is as profound as some of the others, but here goes...

I wasn't much of a reader in grade school. But one summer day, pestered by my boredom, my mom told me to read a book. I went to my older sisters' bookshelf and winced at the stretch of 25 yellow-spined Nancy Drew books... ewww, who wants to read about a girl detective? But at the end of that line was a pair of books: The Secret of Phantom Lake and the Mystery of the Haunted Mirror, books 19 and 21 of the Three Investigators series. The covers had strange pictures of three boys about my age--walking through some creepy woods or staring off against an errie ghost in some antique mirror. Cool! I plowed through both of them in a matter of days, and it wasn't long before I was at the library taking out the rest of the series... reading every book in it at least twice... eventually moving on to Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King... writing my own little wierd stories... a brief career as a high school English teacher... a current career as a magazine editor... and countless drafts of a young adult fantasy of my own!

I never did go back and read any of hose Nancy Drew books, though. Oh well.

Rich Gawel rgawel at penton.com
Received on Tue 23 May 2006 02:11:21 PM CDT