The Best of Twisty Christmas Tales launches this week and there’s a trip to the Magician’s House tucked inside the pages. I can’t wait to get my copy, it’s full of the work of astonishingly good kid’s writers and I know I’ll be laughing and gasping and possibly hiding behind the couch as I read. I love short stories.

It was like a gift to create a christmas story in the fabulous setting of the Magician’s house. It made me realise that once you’ve strongly imagined a place it’s yours to step back into any time you like. Some mornings, when I was first writing about it, I almost expected the red frog to be sitting there when I woke.

Tomorrow I’m off to the book launch at the Children’s Book Shop in Wellington. I’ll get to meet other children’s authors and I wonder if I’ll pluck up courage to ask them if their imagined worlds sometimes seem to leak into their real life to?

Deb Potter