Randal Doering has a BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and an MA in anthropology from Cal State East Bay. He has published about twenty short stories in the amateur and semi-pro magazines. He has traveled a good bit around the world, including Central America, Europe and the Middle East. Randal has written a number of fiction books in the fantasy genre and a memoir of his mental illness entitled Randal, Randal, Burning Bright. Look for both paper and ebook versions of these works on Amazon.com.Randal is a reader as well as a writer and absorbs mostly fantasy and science fiction novels, with a smattering of horror and literary works. He has been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett lately and particularly enjoyed the Tiffany Aching books and hopes Mr. Pratchett will be able to write a few more in this series before his Alzheimer's makes writing too arduous a chore.Randal has particular interests in the literature of the Middle East and in the Maya Indians of Central America and has read many works pertaining to these peoples. He in particular recommends Tahir Shah's books *The Caliph's House* and *In Arabian Nights* for discussion of the Middle East and Dennis Tedlock's books *Popul Vuh* and *2000 Years of Mayan Literature* for discussion of the Maya Indians. Of his own works he is unusually fond of his epic poem, *Forward Base Down,* which took two years to write and edit.