B. Elwin Sherman is a humorist/author living in the New Hampshire North Country, where he writes a syndicated humor column and often reinvents "the cottage industry survival kit." His books have gone largely unheralded, "because I do nothing to promote them. No one should ever have a legacy before they're dead. Life is embarrassing enough without that." He first read Richard Gary Brautigan's works in college, "when everyone else was lugging around Nietzsche and Kant for ballast. I kept In Watermelon Sugar in my hand because there was a tsunami on the horizon, and there I was without a beach umbrella."