The wonderful book Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield, opens with the lines ‘Along the borders of this world lie others. There are places you can cross. This is one such place.’ As soon as I read that opening I knew I would love the book. It’s an amazing story that is a mystery, a fairytale in some ways, and an homage to storytelling all wrapped up together.

I also love this concept of thin borders and other worlds and it’s been growing in me for a while. It’s becoming clear that this is what I want to write, and have leaned toward in This Deep Panic and Otherkin.

I love also the question of what is real and what is not – and if not, who says so? Who has the right to say what is real and what is not? I’m not talking science here, obviously, as proof of what is real. I’m talking about myth.

Times change, our understanding of the world changes, and legends change, but at one point in time, that story was very real to the people who lived it.

I also am intrigued by the idea that our hearing and sight only make up a tiny spectrum of sound and seeing. The theory is that this means there is much more around us than what we are aware of. So, again, if someone sees or hears something not there, who are we to say it’s really not there?

Is your imagination starting to take off right now?

I want to write stories that look at those questions but I’m not sure how to go about it. I don’t yet have a story structure that supports the idea and I’m not a good enough writer to accomplish this. Yet.

But, wow, so many stories could come, and have come, from those questions of what is real and what isn’t, what is true, what was true, and why it’s no longer true.

I’m reading a book right now called The Lace Reader and it’s a mystery but also takes what you believe about the story and turns it upside down by the end. So many books do that, especially mysteries, and I don’t normally like to be tricked by the author. I dislike that whole ‘it was only a dream’ style of ending something. The Lace Reader is more subtle than that but that kind of misleading the reader isn’t what I mean here by asking what is real and what isn’t.

I don’t want to be tricked. I want to be left wondering if, just maybe, the story could be real.

I guess what I want is the magic of a fairytale.