Currently Reading:

A Lion Among Men


Here's a link to the HarperCollins Publishers website, where you can browse the book.

It's not so much the stories, themselves, that pull me to the Wicked series, but their author.

Gregory Maguire has such a precise, melodic way words that I enjoy just wading through them, noting here and there how they're so beautifully put together...

I feel a kinship with him and his passion for rich fantasy.

Here's a link to an interview Maguire gave in Madison, Wis. in 2001 to the CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison) Newsletter.

These are the best parts <3:

"I have often likened the process of writing to trying to pick up a radio signal on a poor receiver. Most often the signal is weak (often it blanks out entirely); writing then involves making sense of what you can hear and know, and filling in the blanks. Sometimes (and this can be called inspiration, too) the signal is strong and insistent, and then the words come as swiftly and cleanly as if one was taking dictation. It is an easier job to take dictation than to try to worry out the connections between scratchy and unintelligible ideas and phrases. It is lofty and exciting and, frankly, easier. However, one can’t rely on inspiration. While I haven’t found that adult books are easier to write than children’s books, I have found that short stories, poetry, and picture books are harder. All that weeding, winnowing, word-whacking. (I tend to indulge in narrative sprawl, I suppose, so I consider myself a novelist first and foremost, and that is what I most enjoy doing.)"

"I write for the approval of the three people whose names are taped to the top of my computer: SAINT JUDE, E. M. FORSTER, and MOMMY. Saint Jude, because he is the patron saint of lost causes, which fiction in development so often seems to be; Forster, because his combination of wit and moral sobriety is an inspiration and a goal; and Mommy because, well, you know."