Mythical

When you look up the word “mythical” in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, this is what you’ll find:

Mythical, adjective, mythical beasts: legendary, mythological, fabled, fabulous, folkloric, fairytale, storybook; fantastical, imaginary, imagined, fictitious, storied.

What a great group of words when summing up the intent of Theo’s Mythic. I loved being taken away to “fabled, fabulous and fantastical” worlds as a child; I still do as an adult (ew, that sounds so old!)

There are a lot of themes weaved throughout my book. The importance of clarity is one, and another is getting the reader to figure out what is real and what isn’t. (Real, at least, as real gets in a piece of fiction.) I wanted kids to wonder and then debate at the end of the book as to what they think happened.

I liked playing around with the idea of allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. The reason being, I wanted kids to feel as though the book was theirs; that the words were laid out for them, but their imagination could take over at any point to define what was going on. They can think one thing is happening the whole time, or think another way. Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific right now without giving “it” away, but I can’t wait to discuss this point with the readers! And for those younger readers who don’t care and just want to read an awesome book, all they have to do is look closely – the answer is right there – within their own little wonderful minds.

The picture above is the map of Mythic. This is the last illustration I’ll be sharing before the book is published. It is the world I’ve willingly escaped to for the past few years. An imaginary place that just might be fictitous on more than one level. Regardless, I hope it inspires, delights and intrigues both young and old, and convinces thesaurus’s everywhere to add “magical” to their list of synonyms for mythical.

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