A Simple Idea

Hi there,

I went to Chinatown two days ago and took the MRT (metro in Bangkok) to get there. I walked down the already hot main street from the metro station to the China gate, which indicates the entrance of Chinatown. I stopped at a statue of Kwan Yin, often described as the female Maria/Buddha of Asia. Paying my respects by bowing down and ringing the bells looking out over the Bangkok river, I stood still for a second to enjoy the surroundings. Fishermen were unloading their catch of the morning, while shops were opening up around me to accept the fresh fish. I then sneaked into an alley (something I would never do in Amsterdam or Chicago - both cities rife with criminality and fear) and passed a little tea shop, a woman hanging up her laundry, several kids playing, pouring water from one cup into another and... an ATM machine.

Mind you, there are more ATM's in Bangkok than there are foreigners. Every block has a dozen or more from a similar amount of different banks. That there was one right here in this alley that might as well have been stood still since the early 20th century was something of a anachronism. And instantly I thought back to how I got the idea to write Simon & Sally's story. I was still living at home with my mom in Roermond, a small town in the south of Holland and I played role-playing games (RPG). I was mostly into fantasy games, like Dungeons & Dragons, but I would sometimes expand my vision by picking out another genre. One of the games I experimented with was a cyberpunk RPG called Shadowrun. What drew me to the game was this awesome cover painted by fan-favorite Larry Elmore of a trio of characters hiding around the corner of a run down alley, with two fantasy dressed characters sporting modern weaponry holding off thugs shooting at them from behind a car, while the third - an elf - was jacking into a high-tech console that seemed somehow totally out of place with its environment. (Google: Shadowrun Larry Elmore).

The stark contrast not only of medieval characters in a futuristic setting (magic and guns, elves and cities), but especially of finding some secret console that hints of access to a hidden world beyond the obvious (and somewhat unattractive one) resonated within me. I thought: How cool is that? and What lies behind the door they are trying to open? and Will they do it in time before the bad guys get them? This thrilling 'magic box' concept where the conservative cozy nostalgia of fantasy was mixed in with the progressive glitzy possibilities of sci-fi meshed and was sprinkled with secrecy, action and some epic quality that made me dream (but ironically never actually play the game).

Fast forward 15 years and I am walking down picturesque, yet modern Prague with my wife and infant son, taking a break from setting up our new lives in Ireland. It is a cold winter day and we are wandering through art houses and architecturally astounding buildings, as well as busy marketplaces and hot dog stands and I see a broken phone booth with graffiti plastered over it. No one pays the phone booth any attention, while next to it is a shop selling the most imaginative artwork, wooden toys and statues I've seen. And I think, what if no one knew that shop was there (as in boarded up) and the only way to get in is to use the broken phone in the dirty phone booth that then allows a secret doorway to open and access to a magical fairy run shop behind it. A sort of reversed idea from the Shadowrun picture I saw all those years before.

That is when the Muses latched on to me from some secretive lair they occupied in Prague and have been with me ever since refusing to budge until I write this story. A story about Simon & Sally who find their magical portal into a world behind our world, but not just a traipse through the rabbit hole of Alice or a fantastic adventure in Narnia. Not merely accessing magical schools like Hogwarts or finding that faeries live in high tech cities below Ireland like Artemis Fowl did. Not just dealing with duplicitous fairy tale characters like the Sisters Grimm do, or discover the true story behind Peter Pan. No, I'm talking about the Big Picture. The Major Domo. The Supreme Kahuna. The Ultimate Connection and Reason. That one little image on an RPG back in 1991 combined with the idea born in Prague on that winterly day in 2006 is going to result into blowing the minds of children and adults alike somewhere in 2011-2012 when the secret behind all stories comes out.

Tum tum tuuuuuuuuuuum.