I am a lover of fantasy literature. An unabashed fan, which is not to say that I am automatically enthused by any dime store pulp novel with a fantasy label slapped on it or that I even frequent the genre (I actually tend to engage with it in spurts), but that the basic concept of the genre appeals to me, and so much so that most, if not all of my writing projects tend to be aimed in that general direction.
The way I put it in a recent conversation with a friend (a brilliant writer himself, with distinct weird fiction and horror fiction backgrounds) was that I find fantasy interesting as a writer because it is more challenging. I know how a person gets up and gets themselves a blanket. But if a person can wave their hand and summon the blanket, it changes things, to put the matter crudely. The fact that the event happens doesn’t interest me, how it happens doesn’t interest me. What interests me, the writer in that situation, is how, when the framework’s of assumptions we make about how our environments work and how we’re allowed to interact with them is changed, human behavior can be changed and at the very least observed from a radically different angle than a traditional story offers.
J.K. Rowling undoubtedly has her spot deepest in my heart when it comes to fantasy—inevitable, seeing as how I grew up reading her books (book one at nine, book seven at seventeen). Rowling and the Harry Potter books formed an important part of my early childhood; I grew up with the characters and not only did I do so, but the books were my first real experience with reading and reading for pleasure. I was a late bloomer, not learning to read until I was seven, and even then I required my grandmother’s (a veteran elementary school teacher with a Master’s degree in early childhood development) special attention and unique motivational skills (I apparently had a tendency to simply memorize the texts we went through in class, and ignored all the foundational teaching). After that, it soon became something that I was capable in, but it was not until Rowling that I discovered a passion and joy in the act and began my ongoing exploration into the wild and sprawling continent of human literature.
This is all to say, (in my own rambling way), that J.K. Rowling as an author has a formative and deep place in my heart when it comes to books and reading. However, British Fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones has a perhaps more unique place there, and I have a special, more grown up sort of fondness for her.