How a Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons Crossover Almost Happened ‹ Literary Hub

He discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien while attending Magnolia Junior High School in Magnolia, Arkansas ("Home of the Cubs!"), by methodically consuming the contents of his school library. He began his digestion of the texts by looking at all the authors whose last names started with A. He chose all the books that looked interesting and read them.

Task complete, he moved on to B. Th is continued until he reached T. There, he encountered The Hobbit, and he fell in love. He remembered, "The thing that appeals to me most about Tolkien is I'd never met anyone who thought about trees the way I did. I think of trees as individuals, not interchangeable." He said that cutting down old trees to plant new ones never made any sense to him. "Tolkien really liked and appreciated trees, and he conveyed that," he said.

Rateliff's life was forever changed by reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.