They looked like her, or she looked like them. Something in between, something she didn’t know the name of but recognized. A lightness filled her, the way it had when her mother had cut her hair and she’d first put on boys’ clothes. She opened her mouth and let the lightness escape, almost surprised not to see a bubble or a balloon floating away from her, like in the pictures in front of her. How could one feel like this and not be flying? Like the Aerostat or a balloon; like Harriet before she.

It was a big deal when a new record came out; you’d buy it then find one of your mates who had a stereo and everyone would come over to listen to it together for the first time.

Remember me at Winterlong.

I should have been more frightened; that came later.

I never think about genre when I work. I’ve written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.

Endless longing; a face you’d known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you’d die for, and die of.

But talent – if you don’t encourage it, if you don’t train it, it dies. It might run wild for a little while, but it will never mean anything. Like a wild horse. If you don’t tame it and teach it to run on track, to pace itself and bear a rider, it doesn’t matter how fast it is. It’s useless.

Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don’t always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that’s one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.

The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.

There is a love of wood, as of other things that do not answer to our touch.