“Welcome to Fantasy Island!” Ricardo Montalban, remember?
Mr. Rourke. Don’t know about
y’all, but I really loved that
show. (Ricardo Montalban wasn’t bad,
either.) Like my cousin Debbie said in
an email a few years back, “I spend a lot of time looking for the exact
location of Fantasy Island.” (Always
told her I was goin’ to use that line somewhere and now I have.)
Why do
humans love fantasy? Because we need it. We need it in some elemental, basic way,
I think. Sometimes it’s light and funny
and gives a momentary respite from the same ole’ same ole’ of our days. Sometimes it’s dark and scary and gives us
reassurance that no matter how bad your day’s going, things could be a whole
lot worse. Because the things that go
bump in the night could be real. The good news is, usually they’re not. Key word:
usually.
I made the
acquaintance of fantasy worlds at a very young age. All children do, I think. The lucky ones retain that acquaintance with
fantasy worlds throughout their entire lives.
And I think a lot of those lucky ones are called – writers.
When I was
roughly five or thereabouts, I looked through the car window one dark night on
the way home from a Drive-In movie treat.
A movie date night with my Daddy, just him and me. Popcorn.
Cokes. The swing set in front of
the big outdoor screen where all the kids played in the dusk as they waited for
the dark to come down all around them so the movie film could roll. Fantasy land for a little girl all in itself. He took me to see one of the Three Stooges
movies. I’m not entirely certain, and
don’t even know if in fact there ever was a Three Stooges movie that involved
the Three Stooges being in space. But I
have a vague recollection that was the plot of the movie. Or maybe I’m remembering something from a preview
of a coming attraction. Five or
thereabouts was about 55 years ago.
Anyway, I
remember resting my head against the pillow propped against the window and
looking out and up. Up at the stars. At their twinkling, revolving, pulsating
light. And I thought, “Suppose somewhere
up there, there’s another planet? One
where I have a double?” I don’t suppose
the words “parallel world” actually crossed my mind at that age, though I will
say most grown-ups seemed to think I had a pretty impressive vocabulary. But with or without the words to express the
concept, that’s what I was imagining.
Years later,
I had the thought it might be fun to write an historical romance. That thought was rapidly followed by the
thought I didn’t want to do any research for it and didn’t have time for
research even if I’d wanted to. I just
wanted to write. And from the hidden
storehouses of my brain, the words “parallel world” popped into my mind. Because in a parallel world, I could do
anything I wanted to. It was mine.
My world. My rules. And so I created one. Vanished. And in that world, folks – You ain’t in
Kansas anymore!
So be
careful when you ask a writer where they get their ideas. You just never know what they’re going to say.
Or how long those ideas might have been brewing in the back of their brains.
Love fantasy and I've been reading this genre for years, more than I care to admit. But I believe every story we write has a grain or grains of fantasy in the making. Whether contemporary, historical or paranormal every story is the writer's fantasy of life.
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