Books may be the only true magic.

Alice Hoffman

The last time I wrote, I wanted to explain that even successful books, don’t, for most people, make a great deal of money. I intended to follow that up with another post, about how satisfying the writing life actually is, despite the fact it doesn’t make you rich…but my day job got very busy and I never had the chance.

I’m actually quite good at making money. I could make a great deal more if I wanted. I’ve got four business ideas right now, for where I currently live and the capital I’ve got available.

But instead, I continually decide to keep spending my time making magic.

Right now, I’m writing a timeless story as true as stone. It feels as if I’ve heard it before, a hundred times, as if I heard it as I went to sleep every night for a thousand years…but it’s really brand new. My characters – a feckless dreamer of a poor boy and a spoilt brat of a rich girl – are stereotypes…but you’ve never met these extraordinary people before.

Their incredible journey of love and hope and their impossible love is inspired by the true story of my engagement ring. Andy and I found this ring at an antique stall in The Angel, Islington in North London. We sent the money back to friends in London, who bought it for us and posted it to Yellowstone National Park. In Bozeman, Montana, we found the stone had been substituted with glass. In my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, Goldmaker’s Jewellers cut another stone to fit the setting.

The stone was lovely, but kept falling out because the Edwardian setting had poorly-made prongs. In Bond Street, back in London six years later, Andy had the shank of the ring mended and sorted out the prongs that held the stone, as well. He also had assay marks put in.

Ten years after that, it was stolen from our tent as we slept with our four-year-old daughter, twenty miles from Paris, France. The thieves were Eastern European youngsters, exploited by an Italian gang-master.

The insurance provided another ring. I hated it. I sold it and bought a new garden shed with the money and got another vintage ring. The stone fell out of that one and was lost forever. The insurance gave us more money…I bought a silver one. I didn’t like it, either.

For seven years, I kept an Ebay search running. Every once in a while, I would look for my ring. And one day, I saw it.

I phoned Andy. We had very little money at the time, but he said, ‘Buy it. Buy it right now.’ I did. That’s when I discovered it was in Stroud, a town about twenty miles away from where we live. I felt like it had been trying to come home.

Still, I couldn’t quite believe it when I opened the box. But yes, there was the chip on the side from rock climbing in the Tetons. There were the ever-so-slightly wonky prongs. It was my ring. Impossible. But true.

So, Alice Hoffman was both right and wrong. Writers do make magic when we sit down and create a story. But that’s not the only magic in the world. There is magic all around us in love and hope and improbable kindness and coincidence and happenstance and…and it’s all as true as a blue-stoned ring.