He rang his bank and asked how much was in his account. A woman's voice informed him, to his amazement, that the balance in his account was four million, three hundred thousand dollars. His name was Richard Bach. Six months before, he had submitted a short story, barely 10,000 words long, to a New York publisher. For the last three months he had been living the life of a nomadic 'barnstormer', sleeping in fields under the wing of his bi-plane. He had been completely unaware that his manuscript, titled 'Jonathon Livingstone Seagull', had become a run-away best-seller.