I have a story to tell. It was never going to be a memoir. I reserve the right to make shit up.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” – Albert Camus
I briefly flirted with the concept of autofiction. At first, my writing fit that frame. But then my words began to wander off the page like toddlers trailing after a puppy. My sentences grew stranger, lighter, going places I barely understood.
Wings were sprouting.
Glitter shimmered in the corners of my eyes.
Then Grace appeared, my beautiful feline fairy goddess muse, and gently led me in another direction, beyond a tidy structure. She popped up in my heart and soul and sometimes, rudely, in the middle of a shower, showing me myths, fairy tale fugues, and echoes of stories that refuse to stay put.
“Just think how much fun a backstage narrative could be,” she exclaimed, her pink tail swirling in excitement. A place where the author, the main character and a cast of feline muses and metaphysical guides might gather outside the story’s margins to brainstorm, bicker and bargain over which version of the story makes it through.
Layer by layer, dream by dream, this story is being imagined —
or reimagined as the story itself whispers smartass suggestions with a flourish.