'WHEN I WAS small my mother gave me a copy of The Arabian Nights, hardback and beautiful, with a cover that swung open like a heavy door. It was the right thing to give a child who had started incessantly telling stories without much consideration for why you would. Back then I thought telling a story was just a way to pass the time, or a way to mash concepts just to see what would happen. I had written one about a forlorn starfish who just wanted an office job, one about a dragon whose fiery breath got funnelled into an oven by a town baker. Stuff happened that wouldn’t usually, the end.'(Introduction)