Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (16 page)

Since our three children are grown-up and have moved away, my husband and I have taken over Adam's room. It's a lot quieter than ours, which overlooks the street, but it is rather full of his old ghosts. I used to sit by his bed for hours, singing to him and reassuring him when he was a child. A lot of that was in the first draft of the story.

I wrote “Bolundeers” for
A
Nightmare's Dozen. The editor made me rewrite it over and over, each time asking for it to be scarier and spookier, which was difficult, given those memories.

The first time through the story, the ghost sang “All the Pretty Little Horses.” And then I remembered I had used that song in “Mama Gone.” So I changed it to “Dance to Your Daddy,” another song I loved to sing to my own kids to get them to fall asleep.

The idea of telling the story of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” from the bridge's viewpoint came from a boy who called in to an educational TV show I was doing in Boston. “Trot, trot, trot,” he said, “all day long.” I broke up on camera.

It took me about five years after that call before I could figure out how to pull the entire story off. Alas, I don't remember the boy's name—but my thanks to him anyway.

One of my best friends is Bruce Coville. Sometimes he gets me to do things I don't actually want to do, such as stay up too late at parties or ride the New York subway. And sometimes he influences my writing. This story has a couple of things that Bruce is famous for: urpy monsters and slime. Bruce put this story in one of his anthologies, his Book of Aliens II. The editor there made me take out the enema line. I whined, “But Bruce had a group fart in one of his stories!” She answered, “I knew I was going to regret letting him do that!” The enema line never made it into Bruce's anthology, but I decided to put it back in this collection.

Brandon is my son-in-law's name. I thought it might be fun to put him in a story. He wasn't a hockey player as a kid, though. He was a surfer. Freddy is named after my favorite cousin. No one else I know is in the story. Especially not the aliens. (Though Bruce probably knows them!)

The wonderful science fiction-fantasy artist Dawn Wilson created a pair of stunning paintings called Winter's King and Winter's Queen. She then asked a number of fantasy authors to write stories to go with the paintings. But Dawn's proposed anthology never actually sold to any publisher. I had started my story but had not gotten beyond the first scene when the news that the project had died reached me. So I put that first scene away in the “Large File.”

Several years passed. And then I heard from another editor that he was doing a Tolkien memorial anthology and wanted a story from me. I had no ideas. (Trust me, this happens more often than you would think.) So I got out the Large File and looked in it to see if anything inspired me.

And there was the opening of “Winter's King.” Just the first page. I wasn't sure exactly where it was going but it seemed to want me to try.

I tried.

Sometimes the magic works.

The opening scene of this story, with Darla in her bed complaining about the girls in Neverland, came to me one evening. I have no idea why. I think Darla reminded me of my daughter at that age who had always whined, “It's not fair!” About everything.

But nothing more happened, so the story starter got put in the ubiquitous Large File.

When Marilyn Singer asked me to contribute to her anthology Tough Girls, I hauled the paragraphs out of the Large File and tried to make it go somewhere. It refused.

Sometimes the magic doesn't work.

I carried the manuscript back and forth with me across the Atlantic, hoping that a story would emerge somewhere, sometime. I noodled away at it, meaning I would add a line, take out a phrase, change a word, break one sentence into two. But nothing more happened. The plot steadfastly refused to gel. So I sent a different story (see the “Tough Alice” note) to the editor of Tough Girls.

And then one day I hauled the story out and wrote about half of it. I have no idea why.

Sometimes the magic works.

Then I got stuck again. I thought the problem was that it might rather be the start of a novel. Clearly it was already much longer than most of my usual stories.

And then again sometimes the magic creaks to a halt.

As I was now hard at work on this collection, I sent the finished half of “Lost Girls” on to my editor.

“Is this a novel?” I asked.

“It's a short story,” he answered.

Immediately I got back to work on it. I named the Lost Girls after friends and family: my daughter, Heidi, my daughter-in-law, Betsy, my youngest son's girlfriend, JoAnne, and a bunch of the writers in my Tuesday group. The rest of the story just fell into place.

Sometimes the magic does work.

Really!

Let your imagination fly with the best in fantasy

MAGIC CARPET

BOOKS

So You Want to Be a Wizard
          (0-15-201239-7) $6.50

Fleeing a bully, Nita discovers a manual on wizardry in her library. But magic doesn't solve her problems—in fact, they've only just begun!

 

Deep Wizardry
          (0-15-201240-0) $6.00

The novice wizards join a group of dolphins, whales, and one giant shark in an ancient magical ritual—a ritual that must end with a bloody sacrifice.

 

High Wizardry
          (0-15-201241-9) $6.00

Nita and Kit face their most terrifying challenge yet: Nita's bratty little sister, Dairine—the newest wizard in the neighborhood!

 

A Wizard Abroad
          (0-15-201207-9) $6.00

Nita's Irish vacation from magic turns out to be the opposite! Ireland is even more steeped in wizardly dangers than the Sates. So much for a vacation abroad.

***

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
          (0-15-200869-1) $6.00

BY
P
ATRICIA
A. M
CKILLIP

Sybel's only family is the group of animals that live on Eld Mountain. She cares nothing for humans until she is given a child to raise, changing her life utterly.

Hero's Song
          (0-15-201636-8) $6.00

The trail of his sister's kidnappers leads Collun to a giant white wurme whose slime is acid to the touch, a wurme that Collun must kill if he is to rescue his sister and save his world.

 

Fire Arrow
          (0-15-202264-3) $6.00

Archer Breo-Saight (“Fire Arrow") is hunting her father's murderers. Her vendetta leads to a distant land where she finds the family she never had ... and a sorcerer's evil magic. To save the people she's grown to love, she must follow her revenge to its bitter end.

The Darkangel
          (0-15-201768-2) $6.00

Aeriel must kill the wicked Darkangel before he finds his fourteenth bride—even though within him is a spark of goodness that could redeem even
his
evil.

 

A Gathering of Gargoyles
          (0-15-201801-8) $6.00

Saving the darkangel Irrylath was only the beginning. Now Aeriel must confront his mother, the dread White Witch—and her bloodthirsty vampyre sons....

 

The Pearl of the Soul of the World
          (0-15-201800-x) $6.00

The stunning conclusion to the trilogy finds Aeriel at a dangerous juncture. Irrylath has been captured and the Witch seems sure of victory—unless Aeriel can solve the Riddle of Ravenna and unlock the magic of an iridescent pearl.

Dragon's Blood
          (0-15-200866-7)$6.00

Jakkin's only hope for freedom is to kidnap and train a dragon of his own, a dragon that will grow into a champion in the vicious fighting pits of Austar IV.

 

Heart's Blood
          (0-15-200865-9) $6.00

When his beloved vanishes, Jakkin and his dragon, Heart's Blood, become embroiled in a plot deadlier than any dragon pit match.

 

A Sending of Dragons
          (0-15-200864-0) $6.00

On the run from government forces, Jakkin and Akki stumble upon a twisted sea of dragon worshipers.

***

The Transfigured Hart
          (0-15-201195-1) $5.00

BY
J
ANE
Y
OLEN

Is Richard crazy? Or is there a unicorn hiding in the Five Mile Wood? And how will Richard and Heather protect the unicorn from the hunters who don't recognize its beauty?

 

Wizard's Hall
          (0-15-202085-3) $6.00

BY
J
ANE
Y
OLEN

Poor Thornmallow. The only talent he has is for making messes of the simplest spells. But when Wizard's Hall is threatened by a fearsome beast, it is Thornmallow—using his one talent—who saves the school.

***

Ask for Magic Carpet Books at your local bookstore.
To order directly, call 1-800-543-1918.
Major credit cards accepted.