Why Fantasy?

by Kim Van Sickler

***NO WAY! The link just came through for the winners of the C4WE's HF contest. Swagger writers took first AND second place! Congrats to Kathy Cannon Wiechman!
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***A late breaking item to celebrate! Janie Sullivan contacted me this morning to tell me that I won first place in the Center for Writing Excellence's historical fiction contest!!!!!!! OK, so I enjoy HF a heck of a lot too!
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In this week's Celebrate the Small Things Blogfest, I am eagerly awaiting the lifting of this latest migraine, certain that when it withdraws, I will feel superhuman for awhile (and hopefully gets lots of stuff done!)

My latest bookshelves have arrived! Yay! More storage for the books I keep accumulating!!! I love bookshelves!!!!!

I am so thankful for my local critique group who has been incredibly supportive and encouraging about my latest WIP, while also providing me with insightful feedback on how to improve it.

And I was thrilled when Janie Sullivan from the Center for Writing Excellence contacted me to be a judge for the latest Fiction in Five writing contest. These contests are so fun! It's where I got my start, and built my confidence as a writer. I can't wait to read the entries!

Now for this week's post...

Why Fantasy? 

Do you ever wonder why you are drawn to a particular genre of book? I do. I love fantasy. Looking back, I think my love of the genre was born of Dr. Seuss, Curious George, The Jungle Book, and all of those childhood fairy tales. Then it was fueled by my obsession with Grimm's and Hans Christian Andersen's darker fairy tales.

I've also loved the idea of the world not being a predictable, easily explained phenomenon. Where good is rewarded and evil is punished. Maybe that also explains why I became a prosecuting attorney. But that's another story.

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was the night I spent in bed crying over the loss of a childhood treasure when I was six years old. It was Christmas Eve and I had told my dad about a kid at school bragging that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. I expected Dad to laugh and tell me she was full of you-know-what. But unbeknownst to me at the time, he had already decided that when I came to him asking questions, he was always going to give me honest answers.

Boy did that knowledge hurt. I felt sooooooo betrayed. Why go to such elaborate lengths to fool me: carrot gnawed by Rudolph, fireplace curtains left a little open, all of the presents with the labels reading "Santa" stuffed in stockings and left under the tree? I wish that magic of Christmas could have lasted longer. I spent that Christmas Eve straining to hear what I knew were my parents lugging the packages from their hiding place to scatter under the tree for the benefit of my younger brother and sister.

I wish the magic of youth, when everything carried a layer of mystery, and the world was full of limitless possibilities, could have lasted longer.

So is my love of fantasy just arrested development? Or a throwback to a wish for a simpler, easier-to-understand time?

I wonder.

What genre do you prefer to read (and/or write)? And why do you think you're attracted to it?