A Constellation of Events: A Guest Post by Moira Macdonald

What starts as an unconventional love triangle takes a heartwarming turn when a sweet note meant for the charming bookstore employee ends up in someone else’s hands. Read on for an exclusive essay from Moira Macdonald on writing Our Monthly Pick, Storybook Ending.

Sometimes, a book’s inspiration comes from the tiniest of things. In my case, it was little slips of paper: things that I found inside used books bought from my neighborhood bookstore or library books borrowed from my local branch. Years ago, I started collecting these strange and wonderful objects – a hand painted bookmark, an anniversary card, an airline boarding pass, a brochure from a “metaphysical shoppe” on the opposite coast, a handwritten poem, a grocery list. It got me thinking about who had left them and about how books can be repositories, not just of our hearts and our memories, but of actual physical things.

And then one day I was at my bookstore (I call it that; of course it isn’t really mine, but bookstores are magical places that seem to belong to those who love them) and saw a bookseller behind the used book counter. And I thought, hmm, if you were somebody who wanted to leave a note for that guy, you could put it in a book and he’d find it. But, hmm, what if he didn’t, and another person did, and thought the note was for them? Just like that, Storybook Ending was born.

I’m making it sound easy, and it wasn’t: I’d been a journalist for decades, and writing fiction was something I often dreamed about but was much too intimidated to try. There were so many wonderful writers out there, creating the novels that I would disappear into during my hours outside of work, and surely I couldn’t possibly do what they did. I was too old. I didn’t know how to write fiction. I didn’t have time. It would be too hard. The excuses piled up and the years went by.

It’s hard to say exactly what inspired me to finally sit down and write a novel, but the ultimate motivator was a constellation of events – the pandemic, my father’s death, my upcoming 60^th birthday – that reminded me that we only have so much time on this earth, and that chasing a possibly foolish dream is a worthy way to spend some of those hours. What did I have to lose, I thought? Probably nobody would read this novel but me, and maybe a few of my loved ones, but that was OK; I would try to write it just for myself. Just to say I’d done it, and then to move on.

As I write these words, Storybook Ending is being published in 19 languages. I have heard from readers and bookstores around the world, from places I’ll likely never go. My tale of a neighborhood bookstore and the people in it have taken me on an astonishing adventure. I am so, so grateful to the booksellers who have hand sold my book, to the readers who took a chance on a writer they’d never heard of, to everyone who encouraged me along the way. The journey that began with slips of paper ended up as a dream come true.