Reading's been a hobby of mine since early childhood, even before I got into gaming. One of the types of books I read quite a bit of were the choose your own adventure type books, mainly D&D Endless Quest and Lone Wolf. The first pure VN I came across was actually the english DVD release of Phantom of Inferno while I was browsing for some new anime at my local Suncoast; the description sounded alot like a game-ified version of that genre I enjoyed so I bought it, played it, and enjoyed it but due to high school graduation and other things didn't have much time to look further into this new genre I'd discovered. Later I'd watch the anime version of Tsukihime, hear it was based on a game, did some browsing and from there learned more about VNs. I then found JAST, ordered a couple games that sounded good like Crescendo and the rest is history