A writer doesn't really know job security until she signs a contract for a trilogy. What started out as a vague urge to tell modern fairy stories developed into a proposal for a suite of three books--The Europa Suite--based on the folklore of Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, which HarperCollins Australia has bought. Never mind that I haven't yet written a word; they've given me money and now I have to turn that vague urge into half a million words of fiction. Terrifying and exhilirating all at once.

This is how I ended up on a three week whirlwind tour of Norway, Russia and Germany. Now flying to the other side of the planet, especially when the Australian dollar is so limp, may seem excessive; certainly it should be possible to imagine locations through reading and pictures. But sometimes you don't know what details will be important to you, or to your book, until you actually stand in the setting.

I stood in a pine forest outside Bergen, on the Norwegian coast. The sound of the wind gusting through those trees was like nothing I'd ever heard or imagined. It was a harsh, flat hiss, like rain driving on plastic; there was something cruel about it. I traversed the five-kilometre main street in St Petersburg, marvelling at the filthy rusted trams, the grimy crumbling palaces, the hunched babooshkas begging outside glitzy designer shops. I drank in the two a.m. feel of the narrow streets of Berlin's art district, walked up Friedrichstrasse past punks and techno-heads spilling out of cafes, stopped to gaze into dazzlingly-lit car showrooms, or admire the construction cranes bent crooked on the skyline, outlined in red and green fairy lights.

I recorded it all faithfully, and in the spaces between the faithful records the stories started to evolve, the scraps of sentences started to breed, the characters grew histories and chose sides. The whole thing was a grand adventure--especially for a girl who, growing up, thought an overseas trip involved the Tangalooma Flyer.

And yet, nothing compares to the approaching adventure of composition, the immersion in the stories themselves. I think of all the words and sentences waiting for me, and I swear I almost salivate. For the next three years, I'll rise in the grey of dawn to spend my time grappling with bad faeries, with friends who betray each other, with frost giants, with lovers separated by centuries, with witches who control the wolves, and with the vast exotic dreamscapes of mythology and folklore--now that's a journey.

So here goes. A deep breath. Once upon a time...

(© Kim Wilkins 2001)