Fantasy, at its best, is balm for the soul. But it is faulty logic to assume that balm is necessarily mind-numbing anesthesia.

At some point, sitting in the school library, during reading period, I looked up from my leopard print hardcover composition notebook where I was scribbling a derivative [John Ronald Reuel ] Tolkien epic full of purple prose in tiny handwriting and thought to myself, "Damn! I am a writer! How did that happen?".

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing-only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house-not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That's when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.

In the desert, water gives life, while in the ocean an island stands to give anchor. Opposites are desirable and necessary. Once again, you see the theme of taking away a precious element of the world or making it rare and precarious.

The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale.

Seems to me that there is no better way to experience the depth of loss than after the fact. No more powerful instrument of imbuing value in an object than parting with it.

Here is where I like to burst in as a writer, to take one strong sensory detail or image and instead of enhancing it or directing attention to it by shouting about it, I simply take it away.