Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

I had been writing since I was pretty small, and I've always been telling these stories about doors and finding other worlds within our own.

If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

I just like that balance of the real and the fantastical because as a reader and consumer of stories and fantasy, I always want to feel like I can find that world.

Whenever I try to map things out they inevitably change. Which doesn't mean I don't map them out — I just try to embrace the better ideas that come along as my fingers are flying around the keyboard mid-draft!

We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.

If you are a conscious human being who has opinions about the world, then you will unconsciously put your own perspective into the book.