I have been blessed in many ways that enabled me to produce this book. Having dysgraphia, it simply would not have been possible for me to be taken seriously as a writer before computers were commonplace. My father also had dysgraphia, in a time when they didn’t diagnose such things in schools, and he loved to write. I have some of his old poems and scribblings, and I often wonder what he could have done if he’d had the support and technology I have. But I couldn’t exactly call myself Steve.

On the other side of the family, my maternal great grandmother also wanted to be a writer. She even took distance correspondence classes for writing—snail mail college—after she retired. She wrote plays for a local women’s group and wrote short stories in her free time. But again, she was born in the wrong time and place, and her life didn’t allow for her to pursue that dream further. Rural West Virginia and rural Kentucky for a mother of six in the Great Depression was not exactly an ideal setup for a writer. Her last name was Lyon—no s. I grew up hearing lovely stories about “Grandma Lyon” and how she wrote, put on plays at the local theater, played piano for silent movies, sold day-old bread, and was the local postmistress in a mining town. She was snarky and bold.

My Grandmary (her daughter) and I took a road trip to visit all the places they’d lived. We visited a dark tunnel under a railroad track that she used to walk through with a bag of money to get home after closing shop in town. Braver than me by miles!

So I decided on Lyon, and then, to make life a little easier, I added an “s” to the end and made the initials the nickname I already carry in my normal life, “El.” E.L. Lyons.