Read Online Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks - Free Book Online
Authors: Terry Brooks
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for fifteen years, the last seven of them compromising myself as a writer so that if I failed, I would not sink into the mire and starve to death. I had wanted to be a writer since I was ten, but I had never been just a writer. I had never given myself the chance.
This was who the man in my book was. This was why he was willing to risk everything to buy a dream.
I began work on the book almost at once. As I wrote it, I talked about it now and then with Lester. In doing so, I discovered that he had envisioned a story more on the order of a Piers Anthony
Xanth
novel, light and breezy, filled with jokes and puns, a romp through an imaginary world that would cause readers to smile.
But I saw the story in a darker light. As a writer, I am drawn to harder-edged issues, particularly those dealing with life-altering decisions and secrets that destroy. So even though I cloaked this book in trappings of humor and populated it with peculiar and sometimes comical characters, the questions I asked were serious. What happens when you change your life completely? What are the consequences of abandoning everything you know? What is the impact on you and those around you when things do not work out as you expect?
I wrote the book in a little over ten months. It is the story of Ben Holiday, a Chicago trial attorney who loses his wife and baby in an auto accident, grows frustrated with a legal system he sees as antiquated and unfair, and searches for a way to change his life. When he comes across an advertisement in a high-end Christmas catalogue that lists a magic kingdom for sale for one million dollars, he is intrigued. On something of a lark and out of desperation, he decides to look into it. He flies to New York to interview for the position of king of Landover with an old man named Meeks (who looks and acts a lot like Lester). He ends up buying the kingdom and arrives through a curtain of mist in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. But being king isnât what he expected. His friends and retainers include a bumbling wizard with mixed intentions, a man who has been turned into a dog and canât change back, two kobolds of uncertain temperament, and a young sylph who regularly morphs into a tree. He also discovers that his alter ego in Landover is a ferocious, silent black knight who lives only to do combat and whose secret he must unmask if he is to survive.
Lester liked the book well enough that he let me keep the idea. I called it
Holidayâs Magic
. Lester promptly changed the title to
Magic Kingdom for Sale
. He scheduled it for publication in April of 1986.
I didnât recognize the book for what it was until I went on a book tour to promote it. What I had written was a blueprint for my life. I couldnât foresee all the consequences yet, but I could guess at most of them, good and bad. The die was cast. A part-time writer for more than thirty years, I owed it to myself to try writing full-time, to give myself the chance to discover if I could make a living doing what I loved most.
I returned to Sterling and quit my job. I moved to Seattle. I began my new life. It wasnât always easy; there were many complications. But overall, it felt right. In time, I discovered that it was right.
In time-honored fashion, life had imitated art. To my surprise, my book did not lead me into the wilderness after all.
Instead, it led me home.
Â
----
The list of successful authors who claim not to
outline their books before they write them goes
on and on. All right, you say, so why are you
telling us we should outline when they donât?
----
Â
----
T HE D READED âOâ W ORD
----
NOW WE COME to the two chapters that are certain to be the most controversial. I have pushed them as far back into the book as I can, hoping that if you have gotten this far in your reading, you will stick it out for another few pages. This chapter and the next are intended primarily for unpublished writers looking to become
This was who the man in my book was. This was why he was willing to risk everything to buy a dream.
I began work on the book almost at once. As I wrote it, I talked about it now and then with Lester. In doing so, I discovered that he had envisioned a story more on the order of a Piers Anthony
Xanth
novel, light and breezy, filled with jokes and puns, a romp through an imaginary world that would cause readers to smile.
But I saw the story in a darker light. As a writer, I am drawn to harder-edged issues, particularly those dealing with life-altering decisions and secrets that destroy. So even though I cloaked this book in trappings of humor and populated it with peculiar and sometimes comical characters, the questions I asked were serious. What happens when you change your life completely? What are the consequences of abandoning everything you know? What is the impact on you and those around you when things do not work out as you expect?
I wrote the book in a little over ten months. It is the story of Ben Holiday, a Chicago trial attorney who loses his wife and baby in an auto accident, grows frustrated with a legal system he sees as antiquated and unfair, and searches for a way to change his life. When he comes across an advertisement in a high-end Christmas catalogue that lists a magic kingdom for sale for one million dollars, he is intrigued. On something of a lark and out of desperation, he decides to look into it. He flies to New York to interview for the position of king of Landover with an old man named Meeks (who looks and acts a lot like Lester). He ends up buying the kingdom and arrives through a curtain of mist in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. But being king isnât what he expected. His friends and retainers include a bumbling wizard with mixed intentions, a man who has been turned into a dog and canât change back, two kobolds of uncertain temperament, and a young sylph who regularly morphs into a tree. He also discovers that his alter ego in Landover is a ferocious, silent black knight who lives only to do combat and whose secret he must unmask if he is to survive.
Lester liked the book well enough that he let me keep the idea. I called it
Holidayâs Magic
. Lester promptly changed the title to
Magic Kingdom for Sale
. He scheduled it for publication in April of 1986.
I didnât recognize the book for what it was until I went on a book tour to promote it. What I had written was a blueprint for my life. I couldnât foresee all the consequences yet, but I could guess at most of them, good and bad. The die was cast. A part-time writer for more than thirty years, I owed it to myself to try writing full-time, to give myself the chance to discover if I could make a living doing what I loved most.
I returned to Sterling and quit my job. I moved to Seattle. I began my new life. It wasnât always easy; there were many complications. But overall, it felt right. In time, I discovered that it was right.
In time-honored fashion, life had imitated art. To my surprise, my book did not lead me into the wilderness after all.
Instead, it led me home.
Â
----
The list of successful authors who claim not to
outline their books before they write them goes
on and on. All right, you say, so why are you
telling us we should outline when they donât?
----
Â
----
T HE D READED âOâ W ORD
----
NOW WE COME to the two chapters that are certain to be the most controversial. I have pushed them as far back into the book as I can, hoping that if you have gotten this far in your reading, you will stick it out for another few pages. This chapter and the next are intended primarily for unpublished writers looking to become
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