For as long as I can remember, I have been devouring books. By the time I was ten I had already read Shakespeare, Dickens, Alcott, Wilde, Tolkien, Lewis, and the list goes on. The story that I recall with great detail from that time is the fairy-tale “The Selfish Giant” written by Oscar Wilde. I read it many times, along with a few of the other fairy-tales, including “The Happy Prince” and “The Nightingale and the Rose”. At that young age, I was touched by these stories and would cry at the end every time. It wasn’t until I was an adult and read them again, I could see the masterful imagery and profound meaning rich with religious principles and the opportunity for redemption.
By the time I was in Junior High and High School, the hunger for literature only grew and I began pulling books off the shelves in my father's study. There was a point where my father suggested that the material was too mature or that my life's experience wouldn't allow me to appreciate what I read. However, I continued to pull books down and devour them one after the other. For a short period of time, I would only read novels by the Bronte sisters. Fell in love with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and longed to change the fates of the protagonists.
While I enjoyed Exit to Eden by Anne Rice, I was deeply bothered by her Sleeping Beauty series and would not read any of the novels after reading only a few chapters of her first novel, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. The Odessa File, a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander was so morally depraved that I chucked it in the trash vowing to never read such filth.
My favorite genre, however, has been Fantasy. This was an escape for me. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings series, and the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy. I wanted to be one of the characters in any of these stories. However, the series that I most related to were the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. In the first novel, The Summer Tree, five students from Toronto travel to the first of all worlds with the mage, Loren Silvercloak and his source, Matt Soren. Four arrive safely in Fionavar. The fifth, David Martyniuk, is lost on the plains. Each of the five, individual threads on the Weaver’s Loom, soon discover they are there for more than just a festival. They will leave Fionavar forever changed. The Summer Tree ends with Kim, Kevin, Paul, and Dave crossing the vast lands of Fionavar to rescue Jennifer from imprisonment, torture, and death. Each forever changed becoming the Seer, The Twice-Born, The Rider, and so much more before the end of the trilogy.
I wanted to be swept away into another world by a renowned professor because I would play an integral part in this world, defeating evil. I felt that I could relate to each of "The Five" students pulled into the "First of all Worlds". As each followed their individual paths I could see myself; on the same journey of self-discovery. And much of that discovery through pain and loss. This pain and loss I felt so deeply during my young adult years.
Cristofori's Dream
When I started writing stories I patterned one of my characters after that of Kimberly Ford from the Fionavar Tapestry as well as Arwen Undómiel. Arwen Undómiel, a character found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium, The Lord of the Rings, is one of the half-elven (Peredhil) who lived during the Third Age. In my novels, The Well-Spring and The Cursed Nightjar, my heroin is a Seer and a Healer.
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