I first wrote to Ray Bradbury my freshman year in college after reading just three of his short stories in Golden Apples of the Sun. He made the mistake of writing back. I’d write to him every three months, and he’d always answer because I tried to say something intelligent about something he’d written.

If that were as far as the friendship had gone, I’d been happy. We lived 3,000 miles apart, but suddenly the world was a lot smaller because Bradbury was giving me writing and career advice through the mail, sending me Christmas cards, and later calling me on the phone!

His stories changed my life. I had never read another writer whose work thrilled me as much. His language, his emotion, his imaginative stories were the stuff of magic and beauty and power.

Years later, when I thanked him for answering my first letter back when I was age 19 -- and the letters of so many other fans through the years --- he said to me with a sparkle in his eye, “Well, when someone sends you a love letter, you have to answer it, don’t you?”

Our pen-pal relationship lasted for twenty years and then I interviewed him for a cover story for The Hollywood Scriptwriter. Six months later, I found myself visiting Ray at his home in Los Angeles.

Suddenly I was part of this team of dedicated Bradbury scholars, helping to catalog Ray’s correspondence for scholarly books. I’d fly to Los Angeles at least twice a year to meet up with the group for a week at a time and go through a house filled with papers and ephemera.

During each visit, we’d tape record interviews with Ray on the long round trip limo rides from Los Angeles to his second home, a writing house in Palm Springs.

We captured the history of the making of an American literary legend, and here I was in the middle of all that—during the last decade of Ray’s life—helping compile and research material and enjoying many classy restaurant dinners that Ray treated us to.

I had to take a long breath occasionally, to remind myself to never forget the moments of this rare friendship.

You see, I realized early on — when just a teenager — that I needed MORE than just Ray’s stories to guide my development as a writer. I needed to reach out to the man himself and know him as a person. I was granted that impossible gift, and I will be forever grateful.