Believe in Your Magic: Alice of Oz with Terence Sullivan and Ellen Baker

Terence Sullivan had no business writing a book.

His words, not mine.

He has a degree in painting, didn't know the “rules” of writing (especially with commas), struggles with imposter syndrome, and wrote his first manuscript with his thumbs in the Notes app on his phone while sitting with his young children at 4 a.m.

Then he met award-winning novelist and editor Ellen Baker and she saw the storyteller in him before he could always see it himself.

Years later, a viral storytelling series has become Alice of Oz, an adult gothic portal fantasy and the first book in The Oz Multiverse, where Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling, and the characters of Oz collide in a story about identity, power, imagination, and learning to trust what you know to be true even when the world tells you otherwise.

But this conversation became about so much more than a book.

We talk about the people who carry belief for us when ours falters. Imposter syndrome. Grief transforming into creation. Why Alice stops looking in the mirror. Raising children who experience the world differently. Letting go of false narratives and doubt. Following the next brick when you can't see the whole yellow brick road.

And then something happened none of us planned. We started talking about magic.

Tears became laughter. Laughter became full-body chills. And three people who had never shared a room before realized that maybe this conversation was supposed to happen exactly when it did. For anyone who has ever believed in something no one else could see yet, this one is for you.

Thank you for your magic.