It really is a fabulous city, especially the old east of Berlin, where the streets are constantly changing. It took a few years before I came back to my witch in the well, and I returned to Germany at the end of 2001 to stay in Berlin for a little while and soak up the atmosphere. What rich material for an author, especially me: I'm very invested in girls who misbehave! Girls who misbehave wind up spitting lizards, or being sewn in a sack and tossed in the lake. Girls who behave get magic jewels and gold coins and marry princes. There's a cruel logic in fairy tales, especially the German ones collected by the Brothers Grimm. I think they are a significant primary source for writers of dark fantasy. I have long been fascinated with fairy tales. I went back to my hotel and started scribbling. There I found a well, and the thought popped into my head that the well would be a great place for a witch to live in a fairy tale. I was in Koblenz, at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine rivers, and I walked through a little crooked alleyway, into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by medieval-looking buildings. Although a number of the ideas for The Autumn Castle had been circling around in my imagination for a very long time, it all came together for me when I was in Germany back in January 2000.
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