Did you ever get lost in a story? I mean really lost, as in the places and the characters so dominate your waking mind that it’s hard to focus on other things? Where characters become so real to you that you think about them, worry about them, talk to them in your head and spend time formulating solutions to their problems that you would share with them if only you had the opportunity?
Naturally, I’m asking because that has happened to me. It can be a weird, even jarring experience, almost like a dissociative state, to be conducting the business of a busy, professional life and be more engaged by thoughts of people who don’t exist than you are by the work or the people in front of you.
I guess the only thing cooler than being interviewed in the pages of one of your favorite magazines is being interviewed in one of your favorite magazines and having the cover art turn out to be this amazing image of Dr. Strange and Clea by Arthur Adams. My friend and sometimes-editor 
This week, some practical information, as opposed to my lofty, philosophical flights into the realms of high lit’rit’cher. (Which means I’m too tired to think, and am thus beginning to just dump the contents of my brain all over the place. I think it may be a sign of premature senility…)
I probably discovered Winter’s Tale in college. It was published my freshman year, and I spent at least an hour a day in the campus bookstore, which, back then, was a respectable establishment. Not only could customers browse the stacks of textbooks themselves, rather than waiting for the staff to fetch them (which meant you had your pick of the lowest-priced used copy), but it was also a well-stocked retail bookstore as well. About the size of my local BooksAMillion, and with about the same ratio of swag to books. No music, though. For music, you had to walk down the Student Union hallway to the Record Coop. (That’s two syllables, if you were wondering. And yes, we all pronounced it as though it held chickens instead of records.)
