Daniel R. Larson

I've loved the art of story-telling my entire life.

I love how stories make us see things how others saw them, or how others would like us to see them - how they can make us laugh; make us cry; lift our spirits. A good story reveals something about who we are.

My earliest happy memories are of my father coming home and regaling my brother and me with stories of something from his day. Later, I found stand up comedy. George Carlin changed my view of what writing can mean - what comedy can mean. Later, I learned that movies were not made by actors, but by directors. Then I learned that many of the great directors wrote their own screenplays. Quentin Tarantino's style, making the dialogue run counter to the drama in the scene, blew my mind.

When I was in my late-20's and early-30's, I wrote several stage plays, and screen plays. At some point, though, it occurred to me that orchestrating all these things (set pieces, locations, actors, cameras, etc.) was a giant human-resources-intensive task. It was a task I was not accomplishing.

So, I started dabbling with writing my own true stories. It started out with emotionally-seething journals and diaries, but I ended up finding a style I liked; painting -with words - scenes the way I saw them, (hopefully) in a way so that you could see them.

I decided, a few years ago, that I had a moral obligation to tell my story of how I lost my kids in Japan. I knew I had been writing while I was in Japan, but it was all a blur. I couldn't remember what I had. I found that I had over 1000 pages of notes, and nearly 200,000 words. Let's just say it was highly emotionally-charged self-talk. It was hard work digging through it all, but it was also invigorating, healing. I was also really surprised at the detail I had documented. I had dates, times, and more sub-stories than I could have ever have cohesively packed into a single book. The "Lost in Japan" book series would not have been possible without those notes. And those notes were, ultimately, a result of my love for the English language. Even living through the darkest moments of my life, I still loved the story of it enough to write it.

I hope you enjoy my books. They are written with great passion, and love. I just want you to be able to take it all in, see what I saw, and have a really great reading experience.