My interest in folktales began with an enthusiasm for the folksongs I sang in my early teens. As a budding guitarist of fourteen, I learned to sing along with folksong records and taught myself the words to old tunes from folksong books. I never learned to read music formally, but there was enough music in the air due to the folksong revival of the sixties, that I was able to learn the songs by ear. I especially enjoyed ballads because they had a plot. My favorite moment in singing any song was the very last moment of the song, the "edge" between the song’s last vibration on the guitar and silence.

It was a magical stepping off place back into my everyday life. The sense of completion at the last breath of song was totally satisfying and I recall singing my way through the many verses of a ballad just to arrive at the end moment. Singing could transform my mood. Once I’d traveled through the song, I arrived at a new place in time. I’d spent the time well. Those moments would never return. I was that many minutes older, but somehow, compared to my daily chores in the house where I grew up, the minutes spent were renewing. The songs were my company, my friends, and my solace. They were things I was too young to understand. The child in me still celebrates that last moment and the journey. Now the songs have widened into tales.

In my early twenties, when I began to create my own folksongs based on the ballad form, I found the public library to be an endless source of inspiration in the 398.2 folktale section. As a child, I had always enjoyed reading mythology and folktales. As a budding composer I discovered I could wander the world reading plots from cultures around the globe and create songs out of them. When a plot touched me deeply, I would set it on my creative back burners and just think about it for a long time. Some stories sat silent for months, others years.