Guest blogger and First Book supporter Mindy Klasky is the author of six fantasy novels, including the award-winning, best-selling The Glasswrights’ Apprentice and numerous short stories. Her latest trilogy, The Jane Madison Series, chronicles a love-struck D.C. librarian who discovers she’s a witch. Visit www.mindyklasky.com to learn more about Mindy’s work and her support of First Book.
When I was a child, my parents told me that books could take me anywhere I wanted to go. Books were like magic lamps, filled with genies just waiting to grant wishes for me. I could travel as far as Narnia as I read C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or I could stay as close as my own backyard, reading through the field guides of Herbert S. Zim, searching for the birds and insects and other creatures so painstakingly drawn in those pocket books.
My short stories and novels allow me to continue studying the power of wishes. I can explore what the world would be like if witches truly did have powers to work their spells in the suburbs of Washington, DC (the Jane Madison Series). I can play with forces of nature, extrapolate how priestesses could harness the age-old wisdom of their predecessors through an ancient, all-observing tree (Season Of Sacrifice). I can study the high points and low points of human nature when children are used as political pawns, fighting to do what is good in kingdoms where evil is all too common (the Glasswrights Series).
In my most recent books, though, I can explore the power of wishing much more directly. Kira Franklin, the stage manager heroine of How Not To Make A Wish, finds a magic lamp that contains a wish-granting genie. She wishes her way into a production of Romeo and Juliet, thinking that her professional and personal lives will never be better. Only then does she discover that some wishes are much more complicated than she’d ever envisioned.
Playing with Kira and her magic lamp allowed me to consider what I would wish for if a genie ever manifested in my home office. (More bookshelves might be the first order of the day!) I’ve considered gifts that I would give my family and friends. I’ve thought about treasures I would seek for myself.
I’m collecting wishes, to include on my website in October, when the As You Wish series officially launches. Tell me your wish in comments below, and I’ll include it on my website! (Don’t be shy – I won’t be including names!)
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