Once, long ago, as a teenager on the shores of Lake Erie, I asked a friend what he was planning to do for the summer. "I'm doing nothing", he replied. "Sometimes it's really important to do nothing." I still remember his response, though within hours I would have turned his homemade sailboat upside down in a sudden crosswind. Years later, I would realize I had followed his earlier advice to the letter, and it may have saved my life.

Author Brian Parrish is an awed believer in the power of story and a regular patron of the dreaming. However, he's best known as a virtual stunt pilot, human cannonball coach, Indianapolis slot car racer and tender tiger tamer?in a parallel universe, that is, where his Elkhart Blue 1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS has been impounded for extraordinary parking fee accumulation. In this one, he scribbles the odd story and subscribes to the International Psychic Cat Network. He lives in the rolling red hills of Virginia with an ambling caravan of family, friends and familiars.