This book began as a teen fantasy as I accumulated wounds from traveling four times round the planet, in over 80 nations or island groups. I travelled by land from Istanbul west to Perth, flying over the watery parts. I also voyaged by sea, in various stages from what was Leningrad, in the Baltic, when I visited it by ship, or Zanzibar, which is on the same longitude, and which I visited by Dhow from Mombasa, Kenya, to Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on the east coast of India, on the Bay of Bengal. In other words the only major areas or continents I haven’t traveled are the Indian Ocean, Antarctica, and Central Asia, though admittedly I could spend a lifetime in South America, the Middle, East, Asia…