Stephen Rowley

I'm thrilled to be back.

Thank you for having me.

We'll make sure that happens.

Yeah, it is my first sort of return to magical realism.

And it's interesting that it sort of lands almost exactly 10 years to the day after Lily came out.

So to be revisiting this a decade later with these other books under my belt and more writing experience, I was sort of interested to see how I would tackle this.

some of those magical twists now with more experience.

And so it was a great joy to revisit something that felt a little bit familiar, but also to be freed by not the constraints of having to write exactly what happens in the real world.

Oh, definitely not easier.

It's a combination of several things.

I think one is we've used our, we've used up the tricks in our bag, you know, and so the bag doesn't refill as quite as quickly as we need to do all the time.

Two, the constant pressure to come up with new ideas.

Three, we want to challenge ourselves as writers.

You know, I, I, I'm sure you feel this way.

I know I do that.

I just don't want to do the same thing again and again and again and

And maybe I'd have a better career or more successful career if I did, you know, that we don't have to name names.

But there are writers who have very successful careers writing on just a slightly different version of the same trope or book again and again.

So I always want to try something new and I always want to grow as a writer and I want to push myself.

You know, as a reader, I'm an aspirational reader.