Gregorio Palofuego

Catherine, Izabella (our daughter) and I live in northern California in the redwood forests, and have been surrounded by the incredible natural beauty and wildlife in this area.

Izabella when she was young, raised Holland lop bunnies, and would play in our garden with her bunnies and all the beautiful insects. Watching dragonflies, butterflies, and ladybugs would fill her imagination and dreams.

One afternoon, Izabella saw a tree frog resting on a fern. She noticed how green it was with the most amazing eyes.

She said to us we should take a picture of him, and put it on Tee shirts.

So, that's exactly what we did.

Catherine's idea was to write a book about a magical land with frogs, bunnies, dragonflies, and everything else we could think of.

At first, we had a few ideas for the characters, and we would write down strange names for each character. Some were just silly, and didn't seem right, so we kept writing down names that would pop into our minds.

One morning, while making breakfast with Izabella, the name Triggy popped into my head, and I quickly wrote it down thinking it was interesting.

Dak Dak was another name I thought of, and I thought it would be a cute name for the little dinosaur in our book. Wazno, of course, was what we decided to go with.

We printed up Tee shirts with a cute ladybug on it. We thought a great name for her would be Dotsy, since she had all those dots. Next was the bunny in our book. Since this was Izabella's area, she thought of Lopsi, by using Holland lop as the guide.

Now, please know, this book of ours took 5 years to complete. It started with Triggy the tree frog, but it took years of changing his look to what Catherine, Izabella and I were looking for. Triggy, we thought, should be the wise character in our book, and needed to look very special.

Near Santa Cruz, California, there is a state park called Nycene. I really liked the name, and thought about how could I change that into a new name for our book.

I was thinking ocean, water, sea, and I transformed Nycene into Nysealia- our magical forest. It's pronounced Ny-see-lee-uh.

We thought it might be too difficult for children to say, but we decided to keep it because it sounded magical, and had "sea" in it.

As the years went by, we kept adding new pages, and the story was getting longer.

But, here is the strangest thing of all. I think the readers will be fascinated by this.

I went to Mexico and went scuba diving and volcano climbing. One night, I had an incredible dream. I woke up, and I was overwhelmed by what I just dreamed.

I quickly wrote down what I heard.

It was: "Go Inside For Treasure"

I knew instantly is was the acronym for GIFT.

I knew it was for the book.

When I flew back to California, I used that in the story, and we used it for the title of the book.

This is obviously a cosmic message. I couldn't have thought that up. So, with this new inspiration, we continued to work on the illustrations, and finished the book.

It was then sent to the printing company in Canada.

When the hard cover books arrived, I read it to Catherine and Izabella, and that was the proudest moment of my life.

I knew we had done the impossible. We did something so fabulous, I almost started to cry.

So many years of writing, editing, thinking, and wanting to accomplish something that will be loved by all the people who read our wondrous book, well, it is a feeling hard to explain.

I personally think Catherine, Izabella and I are messengers. We were chosen to show the world there is a place called Nysealia.

There is a golden portal to a prehistoric land where Wazno is waiting to take you to the crystal caves, and it's there where you will find...