Why fantasy is better than reality...

It's 104° outside of Dove Cottage today. I sit in my nook and watch the heat shimmer like a genie rising from the asphalt. Summer has come to my corner of the world—the desert begins to settle beneath the weight of the sun and hunkers down for the long haul. It is during this time that I begin my travels into a darker place, not evil dark—just not as sharp, nor glaring, nor cruel—well not in the way most of us define cruelty.
Two years ago in the middle of a vicious June heat wave I discovered Danvers Asylum and although physically more than 2500 miles from the dank entrance to its catacombs, I happily crawled inside and began to explore the ruins of the moldering old pile of stones. What I discovered there lead me to begin writing—writing about the world that exists just outside our reach. Most of you know that world, though you'd never admit it in public. But if you allow yourself a moment to drift away from the biting reality that holds you tightly in its jaws (or is it that you're holding on so tightly to the tailcoats of the reality demon that your fingers have become claws) you just might remember that single time when you almost tasted the freedom of escape, that moment just before you let go and drifted into sleep—when you had the chance to step into the realm of shadow.
Night is the time when the soul surrenders. No one makes the voyage through the dark alone. When mortals sink into the sea of sleep, they are caught at once in nets of dreams. The dark sets free a thousand creatures—feline, serpentine, half-bodied, disembodied—that roam everywhere, upstairs, and downstairs, and in the sleeper's chamber. Endowed with a shadow life of their own, these beings care nothing for order and reason and sense. They exist in a baffling world where time moves backward and walls melt at a glance, where beasts can talk and stranger things than beasts can walk. It is a world long forgotten by most mortals—but not by me. And so, when the cloudless sky is so unforgiving that not even shadows exist, I retreat into that place I discovered long ago—the place filled with mystery and night shadows—between dreaming magic and the waking future.
Come back again and join me in the weeks to come as I make my way into the Hill of Hathorne. Maybe you will discover you like traveling through the gates of fantasy, away from the white noise of reality to become, like me—fate's fugitive.