We also have a small pine tree, now. Herm brought one home, it's about the size of a six year old boy. So I call it "Fundevogel." Actually that's not true. But I did make it stand in the corner. (Okay, that's not true either.) Candy canes hang from the branches, and it has a few stars on it, too. It's a very nice living room. Too bad it's surrounded by suburbia. Which is also why I keep the blinds tilted so that only the sky can filter through, and sometimes very small slices of the neighborhood.

It is always the days I am raring to write the moment I get up—those are the days I have to go somewhere, run an errand, make an appointment. It never fails. I am on page 222, and moving swiftly toward the finale! I have many things to determine, many variations of the ending, many variables within it, though I mostly know how it will end.

I am just boiling over with ideas about Book 2. So much opportunity. Earth I want to keep sort of frozen in time, which I have. It exists without pop reference or allusion to anything more than classic fantasy and horror books, which I am absolutely littering the book with. (Aw, but that's such a fun part, plus I need to tip my hat to the masters, this is owed.) But K'Nisqa (the deadly orange/black/brown planet they must soon travel through) will be a metaphor for a thousand tiny dreams and hopes and fears, and for a dozen magical and spooky characters who will exist as little fables with a fable. It's all my way of saying A brand new planet! A whole world! Just waiting to be painted, unfolded, unfurled, uncovered!

Naturally, my influences in Fiction Fantasy are Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, LeGuin, L'Engle, Alexander. For sure, there are other writers who have affected me and may creep in—like Dosteovsky, Poe, Twain, Hesse, Heinlen, Bradbury, or people I am not thinking of. But those first few are unmistakeable. I don't try, there. That is built in, as true influence; as books I read over and over and over and over for ten, fifteen, twenty years. They are hardwired as influence as hardwired as you can get. Which is good. This means they can effortlessly shape the bedrock of my narrative (or at least provide a strong influence in shaping it), but not necessarily mimic the superficial elements, which I think can easily happen if you imitate, or consciously try to "make" your story something, or like something. In fact, much of my research involves thumbing through these books and making sure I am not copying anything without meaning to. I value my originality. But I cannot help the fact that I have been awed by certain stories. I want to set my sights high, here, and part of that means being original in these areas it can be so difficult. Allusion is great, is fun, is homage. But unconscious mimicry is not acceptable.

I want another feel to these books, as well. Not just the classic Fantasy quest. I love the Fairy Tale. And I love stories that resonate with that feel. That is why when you go to my site, you first get the boy with the broken crown (Remember Me? The One With the Broken Crown?), then you click through that, and you get a little fable. "Once upon a time, in a land far, far away..."

That is no accident. I find the Fairy Tale, or the Fable, intoxicating in shape and mood. And that is how this story starts, this book, and that is how it unwinds, how it will be drawn, and how it will end. Grandly, with much spiral and drama, and stark silhouettes of Good, Evil, of fate and destiny; with much beauty and horror and curses and conditions and little magic rules and magnificent, gothic, horrible endings for the villains. At least that is what I am trying for! I don't mean to say every scene is charged with action and suspense and resonant icons. Sometimes there are very simple human moments and conversations. But I strive for that magic, that world, that shape that I first met in the Fairy Tale.

So I am immersing myself in two other books, as well (these are the books I keep on my desk, by my lamp; these are the ones I opened last night, and to which I fell asleep). They are The Japanese Fairy Book, as compiled by Yei Theodora Ozaki, and Grimm's Fairy Tales, translated by E.V. Lucas, Lucy Crane, and Marian Edwardes. These are great, because they do not follow the typical, mauled-to-death, formulaic 3-act readily-resolved conflict scenario that our Hollywood stories are so often based on. The kind that does not challenge you at all, so you learn nothing from it, can speak the actors' lines for them, and only frustrates and insults you, should you try to earnestly engage it. You lower your expectations after enough of these "stories." You only hope to be adequately distracted by the special effects, which are often one of the main reasons the movie was even financed, or at least one of the main reasons you don't hate it, upon recollection.

NO, these fairy tales are weird. I like them, they are like Bradbury, with his odd short poem-like stories that flummoxed me so, as a youth, and later awed me, when I could understand their shape. Fairy tales are often Like poems, with dark and bright fragments and either horribly huge lessons to be learned (or ignored at your great peril), or just fleeting characters and moods that you cannot quickly pin onto a morality tale. Sometimes no discernable lesson at all (at least to me, probably a cultural gap in the Japanese fairy tales), and you sometimes wonder what was the point. Yet, you cannot shake the color of the setting or the well-drawn plight of the protagonist. One or the other, I am reading all of them. I want to draw deeply for them, especially to populate the world of K'Nisqa.

(No—I say to those who need to ask. I'm sure there is much fun and depth and adventure in some of the current Fantasy literature. But I have neither thoroughly read, nor do I reference any of the Harry Potter, or Lemony Snicket books. I was not raised on them. That would be mimicry, were I to shadow them in any way, and I would not do my own talent such a disservice. I did pick one of each up to look it over, and I simply don't think my own reading material allows for too much of those books. As with my music, I prefer to be influenced by the Masters, and a writer needs time and history and widespread absorption and analysis before they can be pronounced a Master by the reading world. I do not consider these writers Masters, though they be hugely financially successful. To me, the work tastes like sugary popcorn. And I like my snacks with a little more grit. Don't mean to push my personal opinion—others are free to feel however they like...but for my part and my own writing, I say let's leave today's children to be hugely moved by these new authors. Perhaps one day they shall write books that are flavored by their widely-available and very popular works. Me, I am stuck being influenced by the Literary Gods of my own younger days....)

Shapes of lessons, archetypes, morals, stories...these will never change. In a way, when you tell stories, when you write a book, you are only reskinning old fables. If you are telling an important tale, you can rest assured it has been told before. No matter how much time goes on. But the important part is that these stories and lessons must come through the writer's own experience, and his/her own interpretation. You must be the New Skin for an Old Shape. And I feel I am doing that. The book is very dark. But I love it. Don't know how my editor will feel. But it feels magical to me. Urgent, ancient, spooky. Little brilliantly-shining moments of hope or magic swirling about the heads and hands of often crippled, sweet characters in an ocean of danger. Always a winding road. Always a choice, though not always easy.

Like my own life!