The answer is 42. So long, and thanks for all the fish. Don’t panic. And always travel with a towel.

Happy birthday to Douglas Adams, an author who is high on my list of influences and inspirations. He would have been sixty-one today, very young still; he was only forty-nine when he died in 2001. He leaves so many wonderful, funny, tantalizingly absurd and nearly impossible stories behind that we can fill at least forty-nine years with enjoying them.

In my wildest aspirations, I compare my own first book, An Alien’s Guide to World Domination, to a bizarre hybrid of the Wizard of Oz and Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I can only hope my silly tale garners a bit of the joy and laughter Adams created.

Douglas Adams, from dalonegroover.com