Van Doren, Mark Skewes: - Born in Portuguese Bend on the cliffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, I grew up in San Pedro on the harbor of Los Angeles. Just after high school I began a life-long battle with depression that made life difficult, to say the least. When I became a father I moved to the beautiful jungle of Puna, outside Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a great place for a kid to grow up, and from my son's age of five I was a single dad. I had lost my own father at the age of nine, an event that greatly impacted me. I struggled all my life with the concept of mortality, but fatherhood helped me realize there were more important things on Earth than my own mortal self. For five years I was the male Co-Chair of the Green Party of Hawaii, finally giving up my position over the party's insistence on running presidential candidates when my focus was on local environmental issues. And all along this journey through life I have written short stories, only now considering publishing them. The Little Snowflake is my first children's book, an attempt to help readers both young and old to realize that life is truly a bright and endless circle.