Do you wanna hear a story?
I’ve always believed that a story is as close to real magic as we can get.
And in all my years, I’ve never experienced a single moment that disproved it.
When I was little, my grandpa, Fred, was my storyteller. He’d look at me and ask, “You wanna hear a story?”
And then he’d tell me something absolutely outrageous. Something so unbelievable that eventually I’d have to ask, “Grandpa, is that true?”
And he’d smile and say, “No, baby girl. I asked if you wanted to hear a story.”
I don’t think he ever realized just how much those words would come to mean to me.
Because somewhere along the way, I began to understand something.
Just because a story isn’t true doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
A fictional character can make you genuinely grieve. An imaginary world can become somewhere you remember visiting. A story that never happened can change the course of an actual human life.
The characters may not exist outside the pages, but the love we feel for them does. The laughter is real. The tears are real. The courage we find in them is real.
And none of that disappears when we close the book.
That’s magic to me.
Not because I believe every impossible thing I write about exists somewhere beyond our understanding, but because imagination itself exists right here, in our reality.
A story becomes real the moment someone experiences it.
It lives in the words on the page, in the mind of the person reading them, and in whatever they carry away when the story ends.
My grandpa told me stories that might never have happened. But I was there listening. My wonder was real. The moments we shared were real. And decades later, those stories are still shaping the person I’ve become.
They’re even shaping the stories I write.
I’ve decided I am bringing my Grandpa and Grandma into my next novel, A Familiar Burden. Fred and Rita, will be raising their granddaughter, a magical girl, a young witch, named Fern.
And someday, someone who never knew my grandfather might meet him now in the pages of my book. They might laugh at one of his ridiculous stories, fall in love with his character, or remember something he said long after they’ve finished reading.
He won’t be here to see it.
But his stories will still be doing what they always did.
Making someone feel something real.
And I think that’s what I love most about being an author.
I’m not asking anyone to believe that witches, fairies, living archives, or impossible worlds are factually true.
I’m inviting them to experience something real while they’re somewhere imaginary.
Wonder. Joy. Grief. Friendship. Love. The feeling of discovering a place you never knew existed and somehow finding a piece of yourself there.
So this post isnt a tribute to the person who taught me how to write. My grandpa didnt teach me plot structure, character development, or worldbuilding.
He taught me something that comes before all those things.
That a story is worth telling simply because someone wants to hear it.
I spent so much of my childhood answering my grandfather’s question,
“Yes, Grandpa. I want to hear a story.”
And somewhere along the way, I became the person asking it.
So when someone asks me why I write fantasy, or what I hope people find inside my books, I think my answer will always be the same.
Because I believe stories ARE magic.
And I don’t need or want to prove that the worlds I create are true.
I only need to open the door and let you experience them.
After all…
I, like him, never promised you it was true…
I simply asked if you wanted to hear a story. ❤️
— Aj Castelletto