Sean Murdock

When I was a boy, my favorite book was Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. His poems were the things I read when I was feeling down or happy or when I just wanted to be alone for a while. As a child, I would sit with my brothers and sisters and we created wonderful stories about forest creatures on mad adventures, or debated the best rules to remember if we were ever to hitchhike through the galaxy (remembering, of course, to always bring a towel). We would memorize poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends and recite them for each other and put on small shows on the back porch. I even recited his poem. Shel wrote an invitation in the beginning of that book that has always stayed with me and it describes my ideal reader perfectly: (Silvertstein, 2017) 
If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by the fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in! 
For all my years of wanting to be a writer, I've wanted to find these people. I want to find the people like my siblings and my children who want to laugh and have their intellect tickled and teased. I want the readers who, like me, can get to the end of a good book then turn back to the first page and read it again (and I want to create that story for them). I don't care much about the stodgy, literary types or the ones craving the next romance or mega-adventure. There's a place for all of them and I wish them all the peace the universe can bestow. I want the shady ones, the crafty ones, the ones who like to leave the normal world behind for a moment for an adventure in Narnia, or Neverwhere, or simply peer over the edge of the sidewalk and enjoy that tingling sensation in their bellies as they, perhaps, leap with me into the abyss.   

Silverstein, Shel. Where the Sidewalk Ends: the Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein. HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.