Tell me, have you read a good story lately?

	I mean, a REALLY good story?  The kind that leaves you thanking God for 
the ability TO read?  The kind that has you all but convinced that you have 
met the characters that the story is woven around before?  Have you ever read 
a story so good that it invaded your senses, bringing you into the realms of 
the unknown?  Have you ever been held hostage by a book, a novel, or even a 
magazine article?

	See, that's the kind of story I'm talking about.  The kind that, as you 
read the first few words, you can almost feel the rest fade out of the page, 
wrapping you up inside of itself.  It re-creates your reality for a bit, 
taking you to a world you never would have known.  Suddenly, you find 
yourself in a place where dragons can talk, where a transporter beam can take 
you anywhere you'd like at the speed of thought; where a young boy or girl is 
the key to the salvation of a world or universe, and yes, even pigs can fly.  
It doesn't even have to be fantasy.  It could just as easily be a place where 
the unredeemed seek the Light or an element of the extraordinary seeps into 
the daily life of some unsuspecting person.  Such is the way of imagination.

	Have you ever fallen in love with a foe so entrancing, so magnetic and 
inspiring that you couldn't help but be drawn to him or her?  Have you ever 
wept with relief as some carefully laid trap sprang and the 'good guys' 
somehow managed to avoid the unavoidable?  Have you ever wailed with anguish 
at some misfortune within the story?  Or been so taken into the plot that 
your own surroundings seem less real than the story itself?  Have you ever 
felt the burning need to find the next part of a story, desperate to know 
what happens next?  Have you ever given yourself over totally to a story, 
resigned to staying up to all hours of the night and dedicating every spare 
moment of the day to the fulfillment that can only come from knowing the way 
it ends?

	Have you given yourself over to the texture of a story so completely
that you had to re-read the last sentence just to make sure that you WERE
reading it instead of having the images conveyed beamed into your mind
somehow?  Did a double-take as you walked down the street after reading a 
story to make sure you didn't just see one of the characters passing into a 
nearby store?  Or maybe you were absorbed in that other world when someone 
asked you how the story was.  You answered, referring to the characters 
as if you had known them all your life and felt that they should too.  Have 
you ever suffered and triumphed with those people who you know and yet don't 
know at all?  Have you ever read a story that seemed to be just for you, 
containing messages and insights that you may or may not have learned had you 
not come across that particular story?  Have you ever read a story so simple, 
yet so full of wisdom that you had to read it over just to feel that you'd at 
least grasped some of the lessons embodied therein?



	I mean, honestly: have you ever read a good story? Have you read one 
lately?

	You haven't?  Maybe it's time you did.




	For my new favorite author, Terry Goodkind, whose stories take me to 
other worlds.  For Tozetre; whose words paint pictures in my head.  Draxel 
Bethlehem; whose inventiveness creates worlds all his own.  And Strike Fiss; 
whose stories I still find myself helplessly hooked on.