I dreamt of leprechaun-like creatures pulling me into a hidden world, then leaving me back home with an overwhelming sense of not wanting to be left behind. As a 10-year-old boy, I woke from such a dream with a burning imagination, in search of something beyond the normal, something just beyond my reach. As my writing abilities progressed it seemed nonsensical to develop stories about hidden, other-worldly creatures, to stray from serious themes about the real world – until I experienced authors like JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer and realized it was okay to tap into fantasy. It was a permission slip to revisit the memory of a dream and write about it.

Children who are different are often bullied and ostracized from their peers. I sensed that a boy who metaphorically and literally had no sense of himself, unaware of who he truly is, would experience such moments and live a life that left him feeling demoralized and depressed. I set him on the page and let him go. Alfheim became an organic exercise in self-discovery, that the ability to overcome derives from inner strength. While a world of Fae creatures and Elves is fun to build, the crux of the story centers on an individual faced with new realities and the need to address moral choices, to learn the difference between trust where it is earned and to set boundaries where it is not, to accept help when it is necessary and to accept responsibility when it is called for. Alfheim is a journey that measures the growth of a character pushed to the limit of self-destruction who then navigates a path driven by revenge and anger while learning the skills and developing the maturity to handle what lies ahead.