I first started telling stories on the front steps of my house in Rochester, New York, where I grew up. During hot summer days, in addition to playing sports and creating adventures in nearby woods and fields, my friends and I would turn to adventures where you didn't have to move at all. That's how story-telling became a part of friendship, and I learned pretty quickly that a good story will have interesting twists and turns-and that my listeners liked characters with unusual names who did unusual things. I hope you saw in this book that I still think those are good things. And, while I'm a lot older now, I still find pleasure in creating a story you might share with your friends if you find just the right place to sit down together. I graduated from Marist College in 2015 with a degree in Digital Media, and I currently work as a book designer at HarperCollins Publishers in New York City. I've loved to draw from a young age, and I have an affinity for all things related to children's media, so I hope to illustrate more of these kinds of stories in the future. Developing the characters was definitely a new challenge for myself. In the beginning, I wanted to work in a highly detailed style, but that always left me with scribbles in my sketchbook for pages and pages. Eventually, I decided to focus only on the characters and important objects. In the end I found that simplifying my drawings actually helped to make the process smoother. Every day was a learning experience!