Roger Himmel

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio into a supportive and loving family. My older sister taught me the names of the colors, the letters of the alphabet, and how to spell my name when I was three. I was a storyteller from the time I learned how to print. My favorite pastime was the illustrated longform, i.e., stories about cowboys and Indians or space invaders, written on a continuous sheet of white shelf paper, and illustrated with colored crayons.

When I was a high school student at the Cheshire Academy, I wrote a story that was called, How the Lollipop Dragon Got His Name. It changed my life. Rewriting it many times while at Kent State University, I met a husband-and-wife team of illustrators, Luther Peters and Connie Ross who developed the characters. The story grew into 300 educational programs sold directly to schools by Singer. Then, after licensing the characters to Rand McNally, Caltoy, Enesco, Standard Publishing, and the Toys for Tots, the dragon stared in two half hour animated specials produced by Robert Halmi.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote corporate collateral and screenplay treatments. It was while I lived in Los Angeles that I read about Robert Monroe and his book, Journeys Out of The Body. His work, and the experiences I had at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia stimulated the creation of my first novel, The Time Travels of Kate Levy. Let me know what you think.