I was born with the name Lloyd Erwin Lowe II (and you thought your name was bad!) on November 2nd 1982. I grew up in different places in Southern California (Englewood, Long Beach, Torrance), and I did ok there. At school everyone called me Lloyd and at home everyone called me Butch. I liked California, especially the beaches.

My family and I (I only had four little siblings at the time) moved from there to Colorado a few days before my 9th birthday. I didn't want to move though because I had a lot of friends and I liked the school and I hated leaving it all. When I got to Colorado I was mostly too cold to do much. Don't get me wrong I loved the snow but it was freezing. We stayed with my Mema for that first winter and I started school there in Divide. For some reason when they asked me my name at school I told them Butch instead of Lloyd (I think it was the only way I could really rebel, I was still pretty mad about leaving CA).

My only real friend in Divide was Ashley Martin. We didn't do as much together as we wanted (we lived pretty far apart) but when we did we had an awesome time. Ashley and I biked and hiked and talked (usually about girls, heheh). One of our favorite things to do was to get old dead aspens and make swords out of them, after which we would commence to beat the tar out of each other with them.

After a while we moved down into Colorado Springs. My grades had been dropping since I moved from CA and I got my one and only F during Fifth grade. What's more I got it in my favorite subject, English. I'm not sure exactly why I didn't do the work, just stupid I guess. Anyway my Fifth grade teacher helped me out quite a bit. He started reading a book out loud to the class that I really enjoyed. I read a lot on my own at the time, most of it was stupid like Goosebumbs but I also read some classics. Jack London was pretty cool. Back to the book he was reading though, it was The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander. It was the first fantasy story I had ever heard. I fell in love with the stuff! I went on to read C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Series. Every fantasy thing I could find I absorbed.

I made a few friends in Colorado Springs during the time I was there, the one I remember most was James Warnock. I haven't talked to him in a long time. I guess I really oughta write a letter. Ashley and I still got together every once in a while but not as much as before.

By this time there were eight of us including my parents (a good mormon sized family). Nannie (the youngest) wasn't very old, less than a year, and Robert (the next oldest) was less than three. After them came Janet, Rouie, Steven, and Me (forget about knowing how old we all were, I can't remember except that we're all about two years apart).

Well during Sixth grade my grades were still pretty low and finally my parents got fed up with it all (they didn't really like the school system there to begin with), and started hometeaching my brother's and sister's and I. My parents were gone a lot during the day and they basically gave us books to read from and and we were supposed to ask if we had any questions. I was lazy and didn't do any work (come on, would you?). We were homeschooled for about six months. Six months to much if you ask me.

Anyway sometime in early '95 we got kicked out of our house (the city tore it down to expand a freeway) and my family moved once again. This time my Dad stayed in CO to finish going to college (he was doing something with psychology) and I stayed with him to help him out (he's an extremely brittle diabetic). We moved back up with my Mema, and the rest of the family moved to Utah with some people we knew from CA to look for a house there. I started going to public school again, this time I went to the same school as Ashley. We had both grown up a little bit (not much) and though I still read a lot (at this time I was way into the Hardy boys, go figure?) we mostly spent our time playing video games. What a waste I made of the time then. Now as I look back, I sorta disgust myself.

We didn't stay in CO long after that. My mom wanted us in Utah as quickly as possible so my Dad gave up on college there and we joined them in the house they had found.

My first day of school in Utah is still sorta like a dream. It was a tiny school, only about 250 kids all together in grades 7 to 12. I had art first period. I didn't get introduced or anything in front of the class, after all I wasn't in gradeschool any more. But when I went in all the kids were just real nice. I don't know how to explain it really, but it was awesome. On of the kid's was Joey Ganino, he was the DM for the D&D games they had at lunch (and as I found out during boring classes, anytime we could get away with it). He asked me if I wanted to play. I really didn't know what it was but thought "OK cool". I told him sure.

Well it turned out that this D&D thing was basically the same as all those books I'd read except for now I could be the character's! Way Cool. Anyway I got into D&D big time. For the rest of the class it was just a phase they dropped out of after a while, even Joey stopped playing as much. I still loved it though so I set out to find a new DM. Since I've allready got a section about this here, I won't type it all again.

Well that's pretty much the story up till now I could go into more detail but I don't want to put either of us through that torture.