I come from an academic background–no hiding it. Deep, deep, classical education–all the requisite stuff: literature (a major along with a writing emphasis), history, music (it was a minor), art, linguistics, astronomy, foreign languages including Latin. A choir tour at age 19 was my Grand Tour of Europe. In grad school I specialized in Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Renaissance English literature–the history of the language and historiography. A summer in London with a reader’s card to the manuscript room of the British Library and a pre-paid train pass for all of Britain pretty much rounded it off.

Now that that’s out of the way, the real me: as a child, I had an Imagination. No, not the kind where your mom brags and your teachers speak of it appreciatively: I was the kid taking home notes asking my parents if I was completely right in the head (perhaps phrased a bit better). Turns out, I wasn’t! My intense little fugues put me so much deeper in the world of books or TV or even a magazine ad with a particular landscape–and everyone thought I was just spaced out (it was the 70’s. . .)

These are a few of my favorite things:

• illuminated medieval manuscripts
• trees, especially arranged like in the Hundred Acre Wood
• a Devonshire cream tea
• a loud, opinionated Siamese cat
• a gothic cathedral’s cloister walk
• Sweden at Midsummer, brilliant fresh and green
  
• a beach on Lake Huron
• Star Trek anything
• Tim Horton’s coffee and a muffin
  

I’m a firm believer in the power of the mind to create and change your world, I just have a little glitch of the temporal lobe that allows me to do it more immersively. Writing stories, then, came naturally: if I’m going to create a world, I’m really going to go all the way. So I relate to other writers in particular when it’s sometimes difficult to relate to others in general. Lucky me, so many writers have blogs!

• Gabriella L. Garlock   
• SE Michigan