Guest Post ~ J. Aleksandr Wootton

J. Aleksandr Wootton ~ Author of Her Unwelcome Inheritance 

J. Aleksandr Wootton is the author of the Fayborn fantasy novel series (Her Unwelcome Inheritance, The Eighth Square, and the forthcoming A First or Final Mischief), which have been described as “A modern Alice in Wonderland with a touch of Narnia.” You can find out more at his website, www.jackwootton.com. His books are internationally available in digital and paperback formats from most major online bookstores.

Guest Post

Many of us have, I think, been among the blessed.

It happens when you are walking slowly through the woods or a downtown district full of little shops, or driving in the country or in the mountains:

You see, from a peculiar angle –

– a stile into a field, the path bend around a significant rock or tree, a barely-open doorway, a cleft in the rock –

– and you know that you are looking into Otherness. At a revelation of something that is truly true, but beyond our world.

It’s little more than a picture; for when you followed the trail, opened the door, examined the cleft, or clambered over the stile, the vision seemed to recede into nothing before you. Even before you had reached the critical point you somehow know, bittersweetly, that it has evaporated altogether. You found (probably) something worth finding; but it was decidedly more of our world, and quite ‘ordinary’ in that sense.

If you were wise, you did not let your disappointment over not reaching that sublime threshold taint the real joy you had just discovered – the forested lane, the cozy stone-walled horse field, the little curiosity shop with its curious little owner.

Your rational mind says “Of course. Was I really expecting…?”

But you were.

Of course you were! Part of you was, anyway, and it could not help feeling just a little sad and a little confused. If you retraced your steps, and if the place was strongly enough imprinted, you might have seen the original picture a second time: the sight of the bend in the path or the half-open shop door might still convince you that something is different and wonderful and perhaps awful just there, for reasons you could never explain to anybody but might, if someone was there with you, be able to point out and successfully share.

Psychology might be able to convincingly explain away this phenomenon as the ‘thrill of potential’ we feel when a place offers a visual invitation to what ‘might be’.

But what I feel at those moments – and what I suspect you do as well – is a certainconviction. Not that we are about to discover an excellent wooded trail, picturesque field, impressive vista, or enchanting shop, but that just There something beyond our experience (and, therefore, beyond our ability to anticipate) awaits, naturally undiscovered by all who refuse to entertain the promptings of intuition with their rational minds.

And when I have not reached that moment, not tasted that shock of discovery, it has not weakened my certainty that the borders between Faerie and Earth are blurrier than the rationalists would have us believe.

In other words,

There is more magic in this world than we know.

About the Book

Petra Godfellow is ready – a little nervous, but ready – to grow up and leave home. She doesn't know the family secret - about the man who loved her mother, who never could accept that it was over between them...

Who's crazy enough to believe that he's the rightful king of Faerie.

As she begins her first semester at Lightfoot College, and Faerie begins to intrude upon her little college town, Petra will be forced to navigate her own doubts when members of her family - people she respects - reveal their belief in the absurd and impossible. She'll be stalked by the supernatural, asked to bargain with unfriendly powers for the fate of another world.

And it's not just her future that's at stake - it's her mother, her aunt, her best friend... and thousands of refugees from a centuries-old civil war in Faerie who are tired of staying in hiding...