I grew up in a family of insatiable readers, and I was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales, myths, and classic children’s fiction. But it wasn’t until I moved a little pixelated green-clad hero into a little pixelated cave, and made him talk to an old man with the inevitable Sword to Aid the Hero’s Quest, that I realized you could participate in stories, too. It was the first time - but not the last - that I’d realize the power of changing a story, and how a story can change you, too.
I’d always understood stories to be fantastic but fixed, precious finite things made long ago, by people who were all long dead. I had written some stories, like most voracious kid readers, but they were poor attempts at imitating Hans Christian Andersen or Kenneth Grahame.
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