OK. It’s been quite awhile I’ve been laying low. I’ve kept pretty quiet. Just to make sure. But I think maybe it’s safe to come back out now. As long as none of you out there on the other side of my glass shield (known in your world as a computer screen) are looking too closely.
Surely you must have better things to do than sit here and spy on our fiction world in here. We don’t really exist. You know that. This is all just for fun. That’s the company line at least. As you know already, we don’t come to life unless one of you authors out there dreams us up in your head. Even then, one of you readers has to coincidentally read us as well. Ha! What are the chances of THAT combination actually happening. So we all figure we’re pretty safe back here.
No one knows about our secret portals. Innocently enough, your eyes find our portals anyway. That’s when we can snatch you. We’re very nice about it. You start writing or reading and we get to come out and play. OK, so maybe we borrow your mind for a little while, we borrow your time. But in exchange we give you back a little vacation. A reprieve. An escape. Some of you get into it so deep you forget where you are, you forget everything around you, you forget all your problems.
We’re better than Tylenol. Well, OK, so maybe you think that’s not saying much. What ISN’T better than Tylenol? Let’s just say we take you places — and leave it at that. We take you on adventures and journeys to strange, exotic wolds of color and wonder. That’s our job. It’s a good deal all around.
Back here this is a safe world, safer than the other side of the glass shield, that’s for sure. Safer than where you go when you dream, if you should take a wrong turn out there. When you come here you’re still conscious at least. Well, in a way you’re still conscious. The doorkeeper, the storyteller, just lets you in so you can meet with us all. Try on our world. For a test drive. Just a temporary spin around the block.
And when you step back into your own world, you think it’s been just a blog or a book or a movie you sampled. Sometimes even a song can be a portal. A painting. Art. You will always want to come back here. Something draws you back doesn’t it? To this place. You are so fortunate if you can find this door. Not everyone stumbles on it, you know. Not everyone finds the crack in our portals.
That nearly invisible crack is the only way to get way back in here to this place you cannot otherwise touch, this world you need to connect with from time to time. This corner is where restraints fly free, where imagination and colors dance, where your special escape comes rushing to the rescue. Here’s a secret. You know what? In spite of that company line about this fiction world not really existing, somewhere way far inside, you really do enter an entirely different world when you come here. Just don’t tell anyone or they might think you’re a little crazy.
K.J. Bagwell, Author 