You have been brave enough to peek inside the wardrobe door, and though you may not find a land of snow and ice behind the fur coats and moth balls, you may come across the odd (largely prehistoric) monster lurking within.
So why time travel? Why historical fiction, fantasy and the supernatural?
I strongly suspect that if you are reading this inaugural post you like to read/watch/write about at least some of the above. I assume that you probably like (or have a respect for) Tolkien, Gaiman, Pratchett, Chesterton, Pullman, Lewis, Rowling and Riordan among many others - and I guess you like your fiction spiced with the Gothic - tinged with the heavy atmosphere of endless lost years. Maybe you like a bit of Sci-fi. Dr Who, Star-Trek and Marvel fantasy. Maybe you're into a whole host of fictitious stories which can largely trace their roots back to either Medieval romance or Classical legend. At any rate you love to escape - and escape in the most wild and outlandish way. You long to push back the veil, open the door and leave the drab, grey ordinary world behind as you try to glimpse a mightier, more adventurous, more beautiful reality slicing into your world.
If you do, then I can identify with you readily, and I hope that in my own stories - my own daydreams in which I have pursued the light and sound pouring out from beyond the door, I can add a little joy and drama to your world.
As G.K. Chesterton said (often attributed to Neil Gaiman and paraphrased here): The real job of fantasy is not to tell us that dragons are real, but that that we can rise up and slay the dragons in our own world.
Take heart, keep dreaming and stay tuned.
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