Portals to Magic

Now and then, someone asks how I developed the idea for my Portals fantasy/suspense series.
It’s because I want to live in a world of magic, even if I have to invent it myself.
I’ve always enjoyed fantasy, but I truly fell in love with it when I discovered Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings opened a world where I’d like to live.
(Well, maybe without Sauron hanging around. And with maybe a few modern-day conveniences such as indoor plumbing and microwave meals.)
But Tolkien – and others such as Dennis L. McKiernan, author of the Mithgar series – didn’t invent their elves and wizards and the other creatures that inhabit their worlds. Folklore and mythology from all over the world abounds in similar beings: literally, a world of faerie, dragons, dragon-like creatures …
So … What if these beings are real? What if they actually exist on a world parallel to ours, separated from our world by gateways (“portals”) that once were open, so our ancestors knew about them. But then the portals closed. (The retreat of elves and other magical beings from our human world was a motif in folklore before Tolkien.) So, for … say … a thousand years or so, we’ve had no contact with elves or wizards or dragons – and maybe we can be grateful for the absence of dragons.
But then … What if the portals open again? What if these creatures that we’ve long dismissed as “fairy tales” and “fantasy” start returning to our world – bringing their magic with them? That’s the world I wanted to explore – a world in which magic is real, and sometimes it’s used to commit crimes.
That’s the world I want to live in – where Magic is real, and your next-door neighbor just might be a wizard.
Or an elf …