Like many fantasy authors, I was introduced to the genre when I played my first game of Dungeons & Dragons. It was during a family camping trip in May, 1980, and as myself and two friends sat inside a travel trailer rolling dice and fighting orcs, the air outside became gritty and hard to breathe. It was permeated with the fine gray ash spewing out of Mt. St. Helens which was erupting just sixty miles to the north. I live in western Oregon in the shadow of another active volcano, Mt. Hood.