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From earliest childhood, animals captured my imagination and heart. Due to my Grandfather, horses always played a dynamic part in my life. My parents took my sister and I on countless expeditions to the Zoo and natural history museums, and besides horses, an endless variety of pets--cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, lizards, the list goes on--paraded through my life. It's this love of, and fascination with, animals--the sheer artistry of their myriad forms, from the sublime to the humorous, their incredible design in beauty and anatomy down to the unique idiosyncratic personalities of each individual within any given species--that has forever transfixed and fired my imagination. Upon this foundation, I was tantalized by the creation of a world, in which animals interacted as peoples, where they lived, breathed, and had their being. It would be a world much like this one, with ongoing histories of kingdoms and principalities, and of the humble, the proud, and the indifferent individuals therein. And all this world would be yet contained within, and dependent upon, a higher, infinitely transcendent, and personal Reality. I owe much to those who have gone before me, and whose legacies have had profound impact upon my life. All of them engaged in the construction of complex worlds and universes in which creatures of diverse forms interacted as a matter of course. Early on, it was Beatrix Potter, in her rural England where Puddle-ducks conversed freely with rabbits and foxes. Dr. Suess's and Frank L. Baum's absurd worlds of Who-ville and Emerald Cities. Felix Salten and a young deer's biography of life in an European forest, who grasps the existence of God. Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, a horse who perseveres through harrowing trials, yet never loses faith in the Creator. And then, it was C.S. Lewis, his Narnia, and other writings. J.R.R. Tolkien, from the grandeur of Middle Earth to the gentle Leaf by Niggle. The fantastical novels of Charles Williams also made their impact. These three especially dealt in world-building, with solid foundations and histories, but also eternal futures, and cradled within a higher Spiritual Reality. Thus, in this mix, Katurran was conceived. It is a complex, even infinite world, and this first book scarcely scratches the surface. Thank you for joining me on this journey. - Terryl Whitlatch
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