  Fantasy
This week: Edited by: Shaara  
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As one of your Fantasy editors, my goal is to challenge you to think outside the KNOWN and to help you inject your tales with fascinating facts while jagging left and right through troublesome frolics and teethe-writhing dilemmas.
Perhaps we can help each other to safely jog through these twisty turns of radical thought, alternate viewpoint, and dynamic detail. Come! Let’s head down the Path of Dimensions, untextured by any earthly array.
In other words,
Let’s drop out of reality for awhile.
Shall we?
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Letter from the Editor:
Fantasy. Every day that follows the next in this crazy world of ours seems like fantasy . When I watch the news and see hordes of shoppers crushing a poor Wal-Mart employee, I think -- that can’t be true. When I see stories of people dropping off kids who are half-grown or almost adult, dropping them off with a good-bye, farewell, sorry it didn’t work out … give me a call one day, I can’t believe that something like that actually happened.
Sometimes I think I really don’t belong to this world. Yet, I don’t know of any other. Ergo, I slip into fantasy, dreaming the reality I prefer or, at least, one I can better understand. Perhaps I really am a ship-wrecked alien mysteriously set down on this sad and confused planet. Maybe I fell through the atmosphere, or slipped through a magic door or a mirror that twinkled and bucked. Maybe I took a misstep through some shimmering, alternate-world’s doormat . . . Do you have these same thoughts as you prance and dance or trip and stumble through each of your days?
Could it be that we are all really dwelling in the topsy-turvy world of FANTASY? Could dragons be hiding underneath our beds? Could our ship through space be hidden beneath the sea, just waiting for our memory to return? Couldn’t that explain the many days when we shake our heads and murmur “this just can’t be true.”
Are we truly sure it is?
Last month I tried to pinpoint the word fantasy. I searched through definitions for substance, for understanding, for sense in this irrational world in which we find ourselves. I scarcely tapped at enlightenment’s door, but I did discover some interesting facts about science fiction and fantasy’s heritage. I learned that all worlds have rules.
I challenged you, my readers, to write a story where some of magic’s rules were cast aside. Probably due to the NaNo Write, not one soul took me up on this challenge. No one wanted to pen the tale of a dragon that couldn’t fly, a magic carpet that no longer sailed through the sky, a witch immune to water. Sigh.
Alas ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~All those lovely stories pining away to be told. Don’t you feel guilty?
All joking aside . . . All around us are the seeds of fantasy. When something I hear in the news startles me in disbelief, when I gasp at a sight, when I hold in my breath and shake my head, and say, I just can’t believe that’s true – fantasy steps in and offers to right it.
What if, I think . . . .
Suppose grass became sentient. Could we sit on it? Could we communicate with it through our chilled, bare toes? Could we learn to run our fingers through its soft, green blades and relate to its musings on moisture, cold, and dropped tree leaves? Would scientists discover that communicating with grass lowered our blood pressure? Would cancer leap away when we lay prone on our lawn’s tender touch?
Perhaps, turning green (as we do with an overly passionate embrace of its chlorophyllic-smeared rubbings) would make us more athletic -- richer, happier, healthier?
Grass blade tea, anyone? Ghastly. One can’t eat one’s friend.
Ah, the blending of truth with fantasy. How smudged are the lines. And in today’s world, where have those lines gone? (Perhaps, they’re no longer lines but ripples.)
Did you know that dogs have a sixth sense? They have all our senses plus a scent-gland in their mouth that lets them taste smell. What if we genetically altered ourselves in the future to add another sense? Would that help us commune with nature? Could grass whispers take on new meanings? What if there is already a song being sung all around us that we can’t hear, taste, see, smell? What if all the others in the animal kingdom hear its voice and only we humans are deprived of such sensory input?
One small step unites the world of reality to fantasy. If it curbs around, it’s possible, we might already be standing on its very indistinct and watery ripples. Could this be what we fantasy writers are sensing? Could we all be walking in and out of the world of fantasy? Or is that merely another idea to help us write our tales for this very special genre called FANTASY?
Challenge for this week: Write a story of 2000 words or less in which reality blends into fantasy. (Nice and broad, folks, but what I want is for your story to begin real, to go on with real, and then to suddenly twirk into something that just can’t be.)
Remember, send ME your story. I promise to give it a full review and to post my favorites in the next Fantasy Newsletter I write (Jan. 7.)
Please e-mail all entries in the bitem format and put at the top: Fantasy Newsletter Challenge
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Editor’s Picks:
Pieces I ran across this month that I found completely delicious:
This is the perfect example of what I was talking about. Fantasy has merged with reality, and the reader can’t find the seam!
I’m not sure whether this is real or fantasy, but it illustrates just how fantastical reality can be.
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I’m sure, if you read this one that you’ll agree the tale is plausible, yet, is it believable? And if so, why do we believe it so easily? Is this another example of when fantasy slips inside reality as it seems to have been doing more frequently lately?
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Ah, even in children’s pieces, reality and fantasy run side by side. Quick, point to the line where reality splits apart to reveal its underside . . .
This one is mine. I think you'll see the same blending of what is possible with the fantasy of might be . . .
This says it all! I’m so glad I’m not the only one to feel alien at times. LOL
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Newsletter Feedback:
From spidey 
What a great newsletter! You've really given me a lot to think about regarding Fantasy. I don't write often in this genre, but you've made it very appealing to me. I think I'll give it another try.
Thank you. I really appreciate hearing from readers, and I am especially jazzed about inspiring someone to write fantasy!
From neeneepres297
I'm happy for when I write fantasy stories. I just like to experience the creative feel of the characters, whether they come from a dark fairy tale or a romantic date of two angels gone wrong as one breaks a promise. I can visualize what the characters say and do, because they write their own story in my head, and shortly after, it becomes a masterpiece written on paper.
I agree. Whenever I find a character, he/she becomes as real as my real friends. LOL
From 333rd Legend  Though life on another planet is unlikely, think about just how big the universe is. It is just as unlikely that Earth could be the only life-bearing planet. Evolution is mysterious and who knows what the smallest of organic life-forms can be capable of just to survive.
To remark on the comment in this week’s installment: no matter what world someone creates, all are going to have to follow the same rules in order to make the story believable. Most rules have to do with geography, for instance; finding certain animals in a geography that doesn’t fit with their habitat would make the story hard to believe. So all worlds, no matter how different, will always seem similar to those created before it. As for the story itself; yes, they mostly follow the same style of plot, but I've also noticed many authors of today have strived to escape this trap. A good example of this is the Prince of Nothing trilogy by Canadian author, R. Scott Baker.
I loved hearing your views on escaping from rules. I wish you’d written me a story about it, but I enjoyed hearing from you about the worlds you create.
Until next month . . .
Writers dream new worlds
using imagination as the conduit.
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Fantasy: December 03, 2008 Issue [#2749]
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