With my stories I hope to cast a benign spell, to send a shiver of delight through your being. I want readers to feel what I did when my grandma read out loud to me as I languished with all too frequent bouts of 'flu in my distant childhood: transported to a place all my own, where the world couldn't touch me. Fever probably had something to do with this, but no painkillers were involved :-) Some stories were optimistic and full of adventure, others--ghost stories by Nikolai Gogol stand out in my memory--were delightfully frightening and addictive in their dark beauty. There was always a journey, and a discovery, even if the discovery was a red herring and the journey didn't end all that well. Reading didn't teach me right from wrong; that knowledge came from life's lessons. I know this might sound like a frivolous statement from someone raised on the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, but the greatest books did not feel like they were instructing me. Instead, they comforted and reassured me when nothing and no one else could. They made me fit to face what we call reality, and gave shelter from it at day's end.

I hope my stories shed a bit of light on a corner of your soul that doesn't get much traffic, and that you like that place enough to spend more time there.

I welcome letters from readers at [email protected]
My biography is here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/valerie-albemarle/