Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

Some authors begin with a blueprint they have laboured over; others are chasing a thought or a feeling down on to the page; others yet write while hoping to excise the thing that squats in their belly and makes them separate to everyone else, however hard they try to fit in.

The result is the same. There is a book in your hand. Behind it – maybe centuries behind it – stands an author. When you

read their first sentence, you are completing their work.

But for others, many others, your gaze on the page of words they have written is the manifestation of a dream.