For me, I'd passed the new release tables and stands in Barnes and Noble for years, and saw the name "F. Paul Wilson" and thought hmmm...the guy that wrote that movie The Keep, right? Finally one day in a grocery store, relegated to the book section whilst my wife was shopping, I stumbled on Crisscross, again by that guy. With the time on my hands and nothing on the shelf to read at home, I read the back and was hooked through the jaw. Fortunately, in the same section of that Kroger's they also had the $4.99 Tomb, Keep, and All the Rage. Started The Tomb, and it just evaporated in my hands. Went on an ebay binge and had all the HC's thru Crisscross within a month. I've hooked loads of people in the interim, and I've never looked back.
The "Other" Otherness - more of a curmudgeon than inimical when you get right down to it, and definitely less Adversarial.