A Story of Serendipity

Quick fact about me as a blogger: I am both a writer, and an artist, and much of my free time is also spent doing crafty things for my art business. I do re-purposed art from time to time, and I will often go to auctions to pick up interesting things to turn into artwork.

About two years ago, I ended up buying about 50 books for a few bucks. Most were old, really worn out, and there were few titles I recognized. I ended up selling a large chunk of them to a book store, but I saved four books, three of which were destined to be re-purposed as art.

Now, before anyone cringes that I used books for crafts, the books I had chosen were in the "well loved" category. My rule with book art is I won't sacrifice a book someone could still read. The first two were classics with missing pages: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Frankenstein. The third was a book about oil companies that had a really small font that would work well for tiny bottles, and it was also fairly roughed up. But the last book ended up in the pile in a somewhat accidental way. I picked it up because I saw the words "Dragon" and "Volume 1", and thought it may be something interesting to read later down the road. With several moves, it ended up getting tossed back in the arts and crafts box, and was soon forgotten about.

Fast forward to last September, I attended Salt Lake Comic Con with my publisher. We ended up being next to Tracy and Laura Hickman, and I got to know them as we talked during the duration of the show. While they were wonderful people, I admit I had never read their work. I picked up on of Tracy's stand alone works, the Immortals, but decided I would try to read his more popular "DragonLance" books if I could find a book one.

After several months of searching, I didn't have much luck. Every thrift store had a wall of Tracy's books, but none of them started at the beginning. There were several different story lines, lots of starting places, but none were that infamous "book one" I wanted to find. I set the task on the back burner, and school mostly put it out of my mind.

Graduation season is coming up for college, and my grandparents were making their way up to visit this month, so I resolved to clean my craft room. This meant going through boxes, transferring items to sturdier totes, and virtually reshuffling everything in the backroom. Somehow that stack of four books resurfaced, and migrated around the room for a good week. When I finally got to them, however, I was started when I realized I recognized the series name at the top of one of the books. Ironically, when I set aside a book two years ago to read, I had picked out Tracy Hickman's Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Volume 1 of the DragonLance Chronicles.

I never knew I would meet the author, and get to respect him as a person before I would get to read his writing. And I never expected such a well worn paperback would somehow become an instantly cherished item.