Realistic Fiction

People use fiction to escape from their own realities. The stories that have lasted through the ages have all been epic fantasies--The Iliad and The Odyssey, Beowulf. And think of our era's best sellers--a mistreated boy who becomes a renowned wizard, a teenager loved by a compassionate vampire.

But Fiorella also needs her fiction to be plausible. Even the one vampire novel she wrote made sense.

Dear God, she'll never get published.

Paranormal Parade

It dawned on Fiorella the other day how much of our classic literature is what we now classify as paranormal. Think about Homer's epics--the appearances of the gods and goddesses in the Iliad, plus the bizarre creatures encountered in the Odyssey. Think about Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf. In fact, think about Beowulf himself, swimming around for--eight days was it?--fully armored. Think about Spenser's Fairie Queen.

Shakespeare was something of a realist, but in Midsummer Night's Dream, he too dipped into the paranormal.

Fiction lets the mind run wild, and apparently human minds tend toward the abnormal--uh, paranormal.