I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.

Kelly Link is inimitable. Her stories are like nothing else, dark yet sparkling with her unique brand of fairy dust. This is the most marvelous kind of trouble to get in.

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.

Our instructors do not understand how it is. To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete.

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.

I do not like sitting idly by when something clearly isn't right. I feel... not trapped but something like it, and I don't know what to about.