Enter Katherine. By the late 1960s, I had been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy (and much else besides) for more than a decade, and I vividly remember my periodic forays into the newsstand at the bus terminal through which I passed every afternoon on my way home from school. I’m sure that’s where I picked up my first copies of The Lord of the Rings and works by other authors who were destined to become giants in the world of fantasy and science fiction: early Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton, Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and a host of others, often as half of an Ace Double Novel.

By then I had read out several local libraries, amassed a considerable collection of science fiction, convinced several college professors that science fiction was, indeed, worthy of serious consideration, and begun my first tentative ventures into writing the kinds of things I liked to read, of which I could never find enough.

I attended my first science fiction convention over Labor Day weekend of 1968, in Oakland, California. Up until a few months before, when a flyer on a bulletin board at yet another library had alerted me to something upcoming called Baycon, I had not dreamed that there were thousands of others who shared my passion for this sort of reading. I went; I was amazed; I actually met some of the luminaries whose work had nurtured me through my teen years. I even put together a fantasy costume (based on the world that would become the Deryni), competed, and won in my division.

But far more important, through a chance conversation with another author about my writing aspirations, I learned of the historic experiment that the Ballantines were about to launch, and even got an offer of an introduction—a classic instance of being in the right place, at the right time, with the “right stuff.”

In late spring of the following year, I sent Betty Ballantine sample chapters and an outline for what was to become Deryni Rising, along with a paragraph about each of the two other books that would complete that first trilogy. (In this I was following the lead of Tolkien; and if this helped to perpetuate the notion that fantasy must be in three-book packages, I must plead partially responsible.) By June, Ballantine had bought all three books. It had been my first attempt to sell any of my work.

Deryni Rising, which appeared in mid-1970, was the first original fantasy novel to be published under the Ballantine Adult Fantasy aegis, and it soon came to be regarded as a classic in the field. The series now extends to four trilogies and a number of additional Deryni titles, all of them with long and impressive print histories. My recent move to Ace as my primary publisher has given me the opportunity to see the earliest Deryni works put back into print.