It Begins

In honor of The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter coming out in paperback, I have decided to start a blog.

Good heavens, what have I done?

It’s not too late to turn back.

. . .

Like all the children I knew, when I was young, people tended to buy me journals.  These journals were almost never the extremely nice sort of notebook with beautiful thick paper and plenty of space in which to write novels.  They were instead small, stiff, brightly colored contraptions with thin paper and thick lines and occasionally even a pen attached.

I once kept an ordinary diary for a whole week.  It was then that I realized how supremely dull my life was.  Fear not, however—I have no intention of using this blog to regale you the details of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner (although you can freely assume that all of these meals are accompanied by a self-satisfied snug pot of tea).

Possibly the best thing about these little journals was that many of them came with a lock and key set, the key to which I usually lost before I ever got around to opening the journal.  Then, when the time came for me to settle down in an armchair and grind my teeth and try to find something interesting to write about, I discovered that the journal was locked and I had no key.

I did not, to my dubious credit, use this as an excuse not to write.  Oh, no.  I used this as an excuse to learn how to pick locks—as long as the lock was extremely cheap and could be jimmied in one easy step with a paperclip.

I am certain that breaking into those journals gave me far more satisfaction than anything else about them.  I have to wonder if I’m the only child who felt that way.

On reflection, probably not.