Not that I don’t think about her every day. I do, more times than I can count. It’s been several years since she passed away, and I’ve never given up the habit of talking to her inside my head. I used to do that, even while she was alive. We talked on the phone all the time. But I’d mentally tell her stories in between calls, so I wouldn’t forget them when we connected again.
Now that my first book has been published, it’s really hard not to think about her. She loved my writing and was thrilled when I told her I'd started a novel. I was working on one for my son back then, years ago, and would send her a chapter every so often. I cringe when I think about the poor quality (that book was more or less training ground for Gambit), but I’ll never forget when she read the prologue. The phone rang immediately, and there she was, on the other end.
“Cary, this sounds like a real novel,” she said, out of breath. “Like one I’d pick up in a bookstore!"
Once upon a time, there was a girl who couldn't stop daydreaming.
She was a little odd. She believed her cats were guardians in disguise and that her dog understood every word she said. Her imaginary friends were spirits from another realm, trapped until she discovered the right language to free them. Earth wasn’t her true home (she was born on a faraway planet with endless forests and a purple sky), and her grandmother’s cluttered attic was a secret gateway to another world. She also had the weirdest feeling that her movements impacted the supernatural—so if she turned a circle before leaving a room, she couldn’t return until she’d spun in the opposite direction.
