Recently on twitter, one of my fans said she (?) can’t wait for the second Elly book so she (?) can hang out with the Ellyans and in Elly again.
This took me by surprise for various reasons, one of them that Elly is a rebarbarized world, and it’s HARD to live in for most people, even the King.
On the other hand… On the other hand I spent most of my growing up years hiding in Elly, and still like to visit, weird and all. Mostly because it was different, very different from the world I was dealing with, and that made it restful. Different rules, different interaction, different everything. So it was fascinating.
Today we were talking about the houses in Harry Potter. I was, of course, an adult when I read Harry Potter, mostly because younger son ambushed me with it while I had a cold, by putting it on a table next to the chair where I was feeling sorry for myself and honking into tissues.
However, I moved into Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Partly because I moved right in with younger son. Younger son was 6 when he first read it, and not really but with part of his imagination, he moved fully in and half serious half in pretending expected that owl on his 11th birthday.
So, of course, we went along with him. We reminisced about our times in Hogwarts, and of course I was a Slitherin — I dare you! — and Dan likes to deny it, but of course he was a Hufflepuff, while my older son was all the way Raven Claw, obviously. We got the hats and the scarves, and we had the most fun playing at being Hogwart graduates.
I was reminded of that today as one of my fans says her daughter is a slitherin, by self definition.
And suddenly I was very flattered that people also want to spend time and live in my world. Not for real. No one is that crazy. But they want to live in there part time, and enjoy it from the safety of their reading chair and the perch of their imagination.
And …. and I want you to. For so many years it was my little world where I played, and which no one knew about. And now I’ve brought my friends in to play.
It makes it so much better.
Maybe worlds in which the author has hid/lived in are more hospitable to other people living in them?
I don’t know. I’m just glad mine is one of those.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Go On Move In”
I live in my created worlds. I reread the books (with deliberate refusal to engage editorial examination after the fact).
One of the reasons I want to complete my last series is that I’m living there now and I want to find out what happens.
I found Pern, then Valdimar, then Charles de Lint’s Canada when I needed them. And I still return to the Thames Valley and Wales on a near annual basis, to watch the rooks fly to the Grey King’s lair, and listen for the geese that are not just geese when the Wild Hunt harries the Dark.
You write characters someone would want to be around. That’s an important part!
I grew up in The Shire, went to Pern for the teen years, and spent summer breaks in Valdemar and the 100 Acre Woods (yes – is discovered Pooh and Tigger in college).
I don’t know that I want to live in Elly for any part of the year, since my visions are all in the snowy parts, but I want to hang out with the people there, and have bread and honey balls. Maybe we can meet up at a certain diner on Goldport…
So, the next book is all in the temperate and tropical areas. Okay, not all but most. Skip doesn’t like them.
There’s many a world I would not wish to be tourist in that I enjoy reading of.
An adventure is someone else having a very bad day, far away from us. I enjoy reading the Victorian hunters’ and explorers’ tales of Africa. I would not care to live in that place and time – too many insects, and no antibiotics or indoor plumbing.
Not many of my worlds are nice places most of the time. Not even talking about the horror stuff for obvious reasons. Post apoc space. but space stations and space ships and spaaaace? Yep, I can see it. The grubby, dangerous world of the undead legion isn’t nice to most people that can’t get over being dismembered and stabbed a lot, or eaten alive. The nice little places, like the Nugget and the Homestead are still languishing in the TBW pile, but they’re more like dreams that you can visit for a time.
The Nugget’s a traveling home that adapts to wherever it lands. Very good for raising children for the two transmigrated, altered humans that live there and a goodly midpoint for the story itself. Parts of it might even be a children’s story, but there’s quite a bit of violence to it, on the one side. Okay, on both sides at times, but life isn’t always what we choose it to be.
The Homestead is, ironically, a tavernish/innish something that exists always on the frontier. Full of rather outsized characters, it’s one that came up from reading old Westerns back in the day, but with magic. Frontier + magic is what made the story happen, and the wider, wilder outer skirts is where the MC travels in his exile, fleeing corrupted sorcerer overlords and helping out a bit, here and there. Great expeditions meet there, go out from there, and return, richer and poorer in unequal measure.
I want to write both, but time is short and swing shifts have gotten into wider and quicker swings. A good story should engage the mind just enough that it fills in the gaps. There’s always gaps, mind, but I like to think the good ones leave things out that *should* be, because the story itself is what happens in the head. The rest is just words that nudge the brain into activity.
This is actually how my current fanfic verse started 😅 it’s like 80% original now and I really don’t know how to consider it except it’s where I live
❤ It's gotta be amazing to have made one for folks. I am so glad you shared it 😀
There’s no place like home . . . even if it’s only in the brain.
And now (in between coughing), I’ll be (silently) singing home, home on the brain, Where the deer and the antelopes play . . .
Sorry, week three and almost recovered. Only woke up coughing twice last night . . .
Me too. Week three. This was the first week we ventured outside the house.