Around sixteen years ago, I wrote my first story, one which today I pray never ever gets into the hands of the free world.  Melodramatic, nonsensical, and - well, really just dumb, it was scribbled on two pieces of that old-fashioned printer paper and completed with my own illustrations.  That was the first of many stories that I would write over the next four or five years.  Most of the stories were based on my own adventures that I shared with Ezmerelda, my Yorkie Terrier, on my family's farm.