End of March

Isn’t it nice?
I always felt like I had all these worlds inside of me, you know? Imaginary worlds most people would call them, but I guess it never really fitted as a descriptor for me. It didn’t feel right. Imaginary/imagination always makes me think of the mind, the head, something in the air, light and outside somehow. I’m not sure how to describe it. But my worlds they feel like they fill my ribcage, my lungs, my stomach, my heart, like they are at my core.

It clicked for me when I read this quote by Neil Gaiman:

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

and it was also something mentioned by Charles de Lint, in a quote or a novel, I can’t quite recall.
That felt right.

Like we all have all these worlds inside of us, all these inner landscapes we travel through. Anyway, I do. I travel through them and I meet people there, and they are me and I am them, but they are their own as well. They are independent and a part of me at the same time. They live and breathe. And it’s not just people, but places as well.
Well, places are their own characters, aren’t they? they breathe and live too. And sometimes, these people and places are kind, and sometimes they are dark, sometimes they are dangerous, or evil, or sweet or anything, really.

This is the most fascinating thing for me, to discover and explore my own inner landscapes, and maybe share part of it with the world.
I find that art, any kind of art, is also a window into the inner landscapes of others.

Oh the things we have living right under our skin.

Yes! HUGE fan.

Terri Windling is more an editor than a writer. The only novel by her is The Wood Wife, which I highly recommend and is amazing. It’s full of desert myth and spirits and poetry and art. So I would definitely tell you to read it if you can get your hand on it (it’s not out-of-print so you should be able to order it from amazon, or, even better, through your local bookshop)

Apart from that you can read most of her poetry in the archives of The Endicott Studio (or her website) as well as her very interesting essays on myths, folklore and fairy tales.

As an editor, I would definitely recommend any book in her mythic fiction series, co-edited with Ellen Datlow. My personal favorites being The Green Man and The Faery Wheel. Also, I would recommend Teeth, also co-edited with Ellen Datlow, a YA collection of vampire stories, which I really appreciated a lot since it restored my faith in intelligent YA vampire fiction and also was fun to read as it touched different aspects of vampire mythology in different culture, some of which are not as present in popular culture (keep your eyes open for the YA dystopian anthology coming out later this year, I’m sure it’s going to be really cool)

I also really recommend The Fairy Tales series, anthologies of reworked fairy tales for adults. (also co-edited with Ellen Datlow)

Also love the other Fairy Tales series of novels she edited. I haven’t read them all as I haven’t got my hands on all of them (most are out-of-print I think), but I recommend Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen (reworking of Sleeping Beauty) and Fitcher’s Bride, by Gregory Frost (reworking of Bluebeard)

You can just peruse her website for more. Hope that helps!