The Music is by Mark Leonard

Opening each page or portal to the ten islands of Emeralda Region, you will hear an excerpt from an album created by Mark Leonard in 1990. Mark gave me a tape of his creation, called Sheer Horizon, as a gift. That was a couple years before the game Emeralda was named. I listened to it a number of times, but a crucial point came years later when I was putting together the background narrative for Emeralda. My aim was to explain how the region came to be, in my imagination, a strange and yet wonderful place.

Mark's music, Sheer Horizon, was perfect. Not only was it varied enough to give the different parts of my story more life, it also relieved me of the question that would have risen if I used music by someone I didn't know and from whom it would be hard for me to get permission to experiment with it.

That happened several years ago. Then, when I began to create this CD for Stamps 'N Stories, it really cried out for music. So, again, with hat in hand, I approached Mark about using an excerpt from each of the 12 pieces, parts under a minute long that I could link to the opening of each gateway to the islands of Emeralda Region.

Mark, with his typical artistic understanding, skill and generosity, provided me with the selections I needed.

Thank you, Mark, for the music!

- Bill Ritchie