A.R. Stone

I started my art career when I was four and my mother put me into a show with a crayon picture called "when the hippopotamus bites the balloons, they will break." I wrote my first play when I was eight. I began my writing career when I read the Lord of Rings when I was ten. When I saw my favorite character, Beorn, drawn by the Brothers Hildebrandt, I knew that I had to draw my own illustrations for my books. My first drawing of a person was awful, with the sideways eye and no lips. I kept at trying to do illustrated books for many, many years because I had no art education and life, including supporting family, got in the way.

My message to all artists and writers and musicians is that you have to be patient with yourself. It will happen, but it may take a very long time and a lot of work--more work than you ever dreamed. However, it is a calling, and all my life I have wanted to be able to give to other readers the love of another world that I got from Tolkien. I want you to enjoy a complete and wonderful world. But another thing that drove me was my desire, almost overwhelming, to rescue the spiritual values of the West. We are rootless, trying to adopt foreign values that do not match our superstitions or folklore. These books are based on the work of giants like Campbell and Graves and Frazer and are mythologically complete. On my web site there are pages that explain each symbol on the page. Enjoy, but also rejoice with me in finding this.