March - April 2002

She was a liar. No one in middle school believed her stories and she knew it, yet she kept lying to them. It wasn't until she met the unicorn in the supply closet that she discovered she had to find a way to make them believe she'd seen the creature, or he would die.

Obviously, a fantasy story. There's a unicorn, so it's a fantasy, right? There's also a typical girl in a typical school setting. But she has a problem. She lies. And now she's seen a unicorn. My story, "The Healing Truth," was published in A Glory of Unicorns Anthology, compiled and edited by Bruce Coville and published by Scholastic Press. I love the story, it was great fun writing it.

I've found a pattern in many of the fantasy's I love writing. Rarely are the magical and fantastical creatures the main characters. Most often, the characters in my fantasy worlds are fairly normal. They are human children. They have human problems. But a quest or a journey in a fantastical setting helps them with their problem.

I often begin my fantasies with a child and his problem. Take an ordinary child with a typical problem, add a fantastical situation, and the reader is dealing with a problem they understand without being preached at.

Most kids hate cleaning their room. My main character in "Add Water" is no exception. He'd rather be playing and exploring than cleaning his room. After sneaking out his bedroom window one day when he'd promised his mother he would clean his room, he digs in his yard and finds a box. The box instructs him to add water. In his room, he pushes aside his mess, sets the box on the floor and puts water into the box.

The dust in the box swirls into a tiny tornado, leaps from the box and begins to grow, sucking all his possessions until his room is clean. He finds he'd rather do it himself and keep his stuff. This story has won several awards, and will hopefully soon find a home.

Look at the popularity of Harry Potter. A kid living with adults who misunderstand him, whisked away to a private school, battling bullies and odd teachers and hard lessons, and becoming the hero of the sports team. Unusual? No. Oh yes, Ms. Rowling threw in some interesting surprises. The boy is a wizard. The teachers teach spells. The bullies fight with magic. And the sport is played on flying broomsticks.

There is something about putting a reader into the head of a kid with problems similar to their own and twisting every-thing else that pulls the reader into this strange world, while still feeling they can understand the hero of the story. Does a child who's lost their hearing dream of hearing again? My character in "Mirrored Dreams" did. A magical mirror purchased at a garage sale gave her the gift of sound. Yet, in the end, it was temporary as she was compelled to pass it on to another, a wheelchair bound child watching others play on the playground. Although the story of a child's dream, it was published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine.

A story of a child's longing and a story of sharing; with a twist. My characters seem to appear first in these fantasy stories, the storyline later. Spellbound's themed quarterly magazine for children was on griffins. I tried to think of a story of a griffin and it wouldn't come. Then, a young boy who loved to sing and was a terrible hunter in his village told me his story. In one evening, the first draft of "Kalil's Song" came to life. The story sold and was published in Spellbound's Spring 2001 issue. It was the tale of a griffin, but more, the tale of a boy and his struggle to find his place in his society.

A child plus a problem equals a story. Put them in a magical, off-kilter, odd world, and you've got a fantasy of a child with a problem. Will Edmund overcome his clumsiness by going on a quest to heal the sick wizard? Will Stephania find acceptance of her ugliness with the help of the butterflies' magic? Most assuredly, the problems are real. The fantasy is an extra gift.