N. E. Tovell

I live in Louisville, Kentucky, but my eleven-year-old granddaughter has always lived on Long Island. She doesn't talk much to me (I suspect that she thinks we live barefooted in wooden shacks and smoke corncob pipes), so when I went to spend Christmas vacation with her, I asked her what she was reading.

"Twilight," she told me. "I love Twilight."

Immediately, I purchased and read the popular series, hoping to finally have something to share with my shy granddaughter. Because I am an English teacher, my children are all readers. They couldn't have been otherwise when our home was filled with storytellers. I like to think that our stories have made other parts of life more bearable.

When I finished reading the Twilight series, I asked my granddaughter what she thought happened to the half vampire/half human child called Renesmee when the blended vampire grew up. We talked about the possibilities, and I ended up writing my granddaughter a story about the child. As time went on, that story grew into a novel. Renesmee was now Delbeth, and she was part Fae as well as human and vampire. Now she was a new species who had to fight for her right to survive and told her story in A Vampire Trilogy. In Harbors of the Undead, Delbeth was the 18-year-old, feisty, vampire blend who sought the protection of the Celtic Covens; Tides of the Undead is about Delbeth's marriage to Galian, and Isle of the Undead shows Delbeth as the progenitor of new fae/human/vampire species .

My granddaughter went on to other interests, but I was hooked. I had created a new world that I visited daily. I suppose it is not difficult to understand why a 67-year-old grandmother would fantasize about a world without aging or disease, but there was also the lure of a better world for everyone--a world where war really did bring peace, and smarter beings overcame common human weaknesses.

I have been reluctant to repeat asking my granddaughter what she is reading today because the larger picture always seems to spark my imagination now. Sometimes I feel foolish thinking that anyone could share my hope for the future when my own future is painfully limited by time; but hey, move over Grandma Moses and watch Delbeth soar. Sometimes she leaves me breathless.