{"id":64406,"date":"2016-10-04T17:07:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T06:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=64406"},"modified":"2016-10-10T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T00:26:22","slug":"karen-foxlee-enchanted-swords-quests-dragons-misty-landscapes-escape-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/10\/04\/karen-foxlee-enchanted-swords-quests-dragons-misty-landscapes-escape-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen Foxlee: Enchanted swords, quests, dragons and misty landscapes, all an escape for me and from where we lived."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a-most-magical-girl\"<\/a>Magic and Me<\/em>
\nGuest Blog by Karen Foxlee<\/strong><\/p>\n

I fell in love with magic when I was young. First, it was through the magic particular to fairy tales; fingers pricked on spinning wheels, brothers turned into swans, doors that could <\/em>but should<\/em> not be opened. Stories of shoes that danced girls to death, birds breathed back to life with kindness, magical clothes! These weren\u2019t just words, these stories set my heart racing, they gave me tummy nerves, and they filled up my brain with wonder.<\/p>\n

I can still remember the ideas I had about magic when I was small. I thought I could go backward in time if I sewed with thread on satin and then unpicked my stitches. True story. It was the kind of thing I tried. I thought if I made my brother spin around with me one hundred times we could open a portal into another realm. He patiently obliged. I had an imaginary friend called Saint Catherine who lived on page five hundred and thirty-three of the Reader\u2019s Digest tome Strange Stories and Amazing Facts.<\/em> She\u2019d only step from the page if I opened it at midnight. I believed in her, had conversations with her, told her most of my problems.<\/p>\n

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Fairy tales… weren\u2019t just words, these stories set my heart racing, they gave me tummy nerves, and they filled up my brain with wonder.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Soon after it was the magic of Arthurian legends that captivated me. I wandered in a fog of Mary Stewart\u2019s Hollow Hills<\/a><\/em> and Crystal Cave<\/a> <\/em>fantasies. I imagined a wizard trapped in, of all things, our backyard lemon tree. I fancied myself as Morgan Le Fay, dark-haired and seductive, as I clunked to school in my orthopaedic back brace. Enchanted swords, quests, dragons and misty landscapes, all an escape for me and from where we lived; a mining town, smack bang in the middle of nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\t\t