But it wasn’t until several years later, when I picked up some of my older sister’s books, that I realized where her stories came from.
So many of the characters, places, and stories we had played over the years were drawn from the books she was reading at the time.
Imagine it for a moment. You pick a book off the shelf, flip it open, and suddenly realize that a character seems oddly familiar, almost as though you’ve met before. You recall a name, but can’t figure out how. The story you’ve never read tugs at your memory.
Deja vu?
The more books I read, the more I realized that I had already traveled a fair bit around the literary world in those games in the backyard.
I’d sailed to Treasure Island with Jim Hawkins. Traveled to Letzenstein and escaped from Julius Varenshalt along with Catherine Ayre from the Letzenstein Chronicles. Journeyed through the Wardrobe to Narnia along with the four Pevensies.
I think I can honestly say it was that first epic story I heard … and those wonderful little games we played … that inspired me to write novels of my own.
To create characters and worlds and events that would transport others to an imaginary place. To allow others to experience what I had experienced.
The beauty of imagination.
It’s a wonderful gift.
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” – Carl Sagan