Where is Faery?
The realm of Faery is the remains of myth and folktale at the beginning of the printing era–a division from the written word, the space between the reality of a story, the telling of a story and the capturing of a story, like a lightning bug in a mason jar, to pin it down to one frozen form, and from there to deconstruct it to make derivations.
The Veil is a spell that was constructed around the edges of Faery to keep outside its borders those who would kill and eliminate the Fae. It also separates the dimension of the shaman, the HyperDimension (HD), where many people have lost a soul through substance abuse without the shaman’s training. The Veil was concocted by all the fae who could see the value of protection and who wanted to live in a certain amount of peace in their long lives.
As the Veil and the spell that sustains it unravel, more and more of the denizens of Fiction, the HyperDimension, Cyberspace, and even Mundane will be coming to call. The Twilight Lounge may become very crowded, especially if Belle is not there to ride herd on the cats that hang out there. The Twilight Lounge is not properly part of Faery or any of the other dimensions, but is a portal, a nexxus for moving from one to the other, and possibly other destinations.
The Fae occasionally brought someone across, or went slumming themselves, but for the most part, the Veil between Mundane, HD and Faery was solid and useful. Some of the Fae stayed too long in Mundane, and died, but others found a way to live here permanently, in a pocket world called Mundance–a muse-ical typo that has happened enough times to make it come true. From my perspective, the entire urban fantasy genre comes from Mundance–bits of Faery encapsulated in the fossilized amber of Mundane. What happens if the Veil completely unravels, as it has in Neauwae, remains to be seen.
Over the last 1000 years (at least in Mundane), a new dimension has grown at right angles both from Faery and from Mundane, often called Cyberspace in these modern times, but it did not originate in telecommunications. Cyberspace is not only the space between my keyboard and your monitor, but between my mouth and your ears over the phone, and between my mind and your mind as you live in the world that I create.
This is only possible because you and I are ONE. That which expresses as me and that which expresses as you are connected to each other as the ONE, so that images and sensations from my pre-frontal cortex can be coded onto symbols and decoded by your prefrontal cortex. This is the deepest magic, that one person can make up a story, and another can experience it.
At some point, Maven will be exploring this dimension, maybe running into some of her favorite characters from literature, TV and movies. She might also meet both gamers and game characters–wonder if Lara Croft or Zelda have any wishes to be granted?
My wish today is to sort out what my real wishes are… separate them from I thought they were and what they should be, and what would fit.
LOVED your book.