<p>The Silver Call is the very first fantasy I ever wrote, and al- though it was my first, it was published after the second fantasy I wrote--The Iron Tower--but make no mistake: this truly is the first one writtenl, and there is a special spot in my heart for The Silver Call for two primary reasons: 1) it kept me sane, for I was flat on my back in a cast that went from my armpits to my toes, and it gave me something to do while recuperating; and 2) it is the first story I wrote wherein Warrows appear. Why was I in that cast? What happened? I was run over by a car; it shattered my left femur, broke it into at least fifty pieces. One way to heal a bone break is to use a cast to immo- bilize the joint above the break and the joint below it. For a femur, that means immobilizing the hip and the knee, and at the time the only way to do that was to go from armpits to toes with the cast. How did I get run over? While tiding my dirt bike, a car came around a blind comer on my side of the road. QED. Okay, enough of that. What about the Warrows? How did I come about them? Well, I knew that a Mithgarian adventure should include Elves and Dwarves and High Kings and brave warriors and Wizards and ROcks and Trolls and Gargons and other beings fair and foul in a tale set in perilous times, for they are the stuff</p>