The story behind the story

In 1998 my husband and I spent two years in the beautiful country of Slovenia. Our recently married daughter stayed in England to look after the family home. Each Sunday night I sent her an email telling her about the people we met, the journeys we made, and the towns and countryside through which we travelled.

We lived in an apartment about ten minutes from the capital and our office, in the basement, was 10 minutes in the other direction. During the late spring and early summer, we would climb the steps from our office to eat lunch on the veranda, where we would watch the birds of prey circling above ‘The Gorra’. I was rapidly running out of things to write home about and on this particular day lunch was silent, and thoughtful.

The land next door belonged to a Bakery. Backing onto the fence was a large rectangular wood pile made of tree branches laid in alternate rows. The passing seasons had coloured the wood to a silver grey and on this day, I found myself staring into its depths. My husband asked what I was looking at?

‘The eyes in the woodpile,’ was my reply.

‘They are called knots,’ was his kindly meant answer.

I gently explained, ‘No, not the knots. The green eyes of the wood sprites.’

After staring, for some time into the woodpile, he said, ‘Tell me about the wood sprites.’

And I did.

That was how the book began. (It didn’t have a title for many years). Each evening for two years I plotted the next chapter which would be written on Sunday afternoons and sent to our daughter. Hence over a hundred chapters left Slovenia to bridge the actual distance between us with a tale of another reality, time, and place. However, I had to promise that none of the creatures would die. That I almost kept.

Over time I reworked several chapters but when deciding to have the book published, I found it was impossible to divide it in two. There would have been one large book and one slim book. It has ended up complete as one rather large book.

A story of power and corruption is not new, but as you follow the lives of those caught up in the fight, their strengths and weaknesses form the basis of hope and despair, of avarice and charity, of neglect and care. Remember, heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and ethnicity. Choose yours and follow their story across the borders of imagination, into a land far from home.