Magic Realism. I get some weird notions about writing sometimes. Yesterday on my walk, it occurred to me that I should write Fires of Allah as magic realism. What that would mean, I wasn't clear. I have a "sense" of it, but whether I could actually do it, I'm doubtful.

I had an interesting experience after reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Everything I wrote for weeks after mimicked that style, without meaning to. It was just so influential that I couldn't escape it.

I do enjoy some magic realism books. I loved Damascus Gate by Robert Stone. The story almost tipped into magic the entire way, but never quite did. Even when the magic happens, like in One Hundred Years of Solitude where the young girl ascends to heaven, the style is such that it could all be an illusion, an interpretation, an unreliable memory.

What I like about magic realism is the blending of poetry in prose, the fantastic with the normal. The sense that we live alongside strange things that never quite manifest.

I get these wild ideas sometimes, but when it comes time to do them I don't quite have the chops. I can't really pull it off. My writing is usually straightforward, plot driven, if I'm lucky with some character development. Once in a while a chapter pops out that is more subtle, and the stronger for it. But it happens almost by accident. Mostly, I have an idea and I just do it.

Plot driven adventure books with hooks is just the kind of book I like to write. And not coincidentally, the kind of books I mostly read.