Linus is a curious fellow. When people think of the archetypal “hero” in the fantasy genre, chances are they’re not a portly, fussy man in his forties who also happens to be queer. This was intentional on my part. I wanted to subvert tropes right from the very start, and Linus fits the bill perfectly. As a social worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, Linus is good at what he does. He cares about the children he works with and has made his work his entire life, so much so that everything else has fallen by the wayside. While we only get hints about his upbringing, it’s clear from the very first page that yes, he’s determined, but he’s also stuck in a rut of his own making. And with that rut comes a pervasive sense of loneliness that he does his best to ignore. He’s going through the motions because that’s the life he’s chosen for himself. There’s the old adage of it’s better to be seen than heard. Linus doesn’t want to be seen or heard. He wants to do what’s required of him and not make any waves. His dreams are muted, colorless, like the city around him where the rain never ends. It’s not until he steps foot on the island that the world explodes in color, an homage to Dorothy stepping from the sepia-toned Kansas into the brightness that is Oz.

Though Ms. Bubblegum’s page time is sparse, I love her character to pieces. She was never going to be more than how you find her in these pages. I didn’t have any other character arc planned for her, and while she’s as minor as a character can be and still be on the page, there’s just something about her that I find bafflingly endearing. Is she a good person? I don’t know. Even by the end, this isn’t made clear. But oh, does she light up the page with her dry delivery as she snaps her gum. I often wonder about her, what she’s like outside of DICOMY, and if she believes in what DICOMY does. I don’t have the answer for that, but I like to think she believes Extremely Upper Management are all full of crap. Because they are.

This is fantasy, yes, one filled with all manner of fantastical creatures capable of impossible feats of the imagination. The beings here are different. And while such things should be celebrated given that our differences make us unique, there will always be those who fear what they don’t understand. It’s not about lacking empathy, exactly (though there are plenty who do), but more that they have allowed their fear to become all they know. I find it odd how easily fear can turn into prejudice. Instead of taking the time to learn about what scares us to find why it does (and why we were scared in the first place), there are those who allow it to devolve into something darker. We often build things up in our heads that have no basis in reality. It becomes our truth as we take bits and pieces of a whole to create a complete picture akin to a sort-of Frankenstein’s Monster: stitched together from different parts that, while resembling something we recognize, is still just off enough to fill us with a sense of unease. Or, at least, it should. And yet, there is something so distinctly human about this. Our lizard-brains take over, filling our heads with nonsense that some aren’t able to dissociate from. Those are the ones who take SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING as gospel truth. Can we ever change their minds? I don’t know. I’d like to think we could, but then we live in a day and age where a book about kindness is still somewhat of a novelty, so what do I know.

Oh, Sal. How I adore you. This big, quiet boy who turns into a tiny fluffy dog was one of the first characters—after Linus and Lucy—that I created. He is the newest arrival to the island, and his backstory isn’t the easiest given all he went through before he found where he belonged. He, like Linus, doesn’t want to be seen or heard. And like me, he finds it easier to write down his thoughts rather than speaking them out loud. Words can be hard. I often lose my train of thought and end up talking in circles. But when I write? It feels like I’m singing. And I wanted that more than anything for Sal. I knew almost as soon as I figured out his name that he wanted to be a writer. He doesn’t talk much because his voice has been taken from him by people in power who should know better. This scene, where he stands in front of the group and reads what he’s written, is Sal speaking his truth for perhaps one of the first times in his life. It could be argued that he does this for Linus’s benefit, given what Linus is to the orphanage: a government employee with the power to shut everything down. But I think that notion would take away from the power of this moment. Yes, Linus is a symbol of the government that has treated him so badly, but Sal is also doing this for himself, to show that while he may be shy and quiet, he’s a force to be reckoned with, and he won’t let his new home be taken from him without a fight. Here, he is singing, and everyone hears his song.

For me, this is the moment when Linus realizes that things aren’t as they should be, though he doesn’t quite know yet what to do with this information. And I felt it important that this didn’t come from Arthur, the love interest, or the children who inhabit the island. It rightly comes from Zoe Chapelwhite. Zoe is far older than she appears and has seen prejudice up close for most of her life. Not only is she a sprite—one of the magical beings the government regulates—she’s a person of color. I, as a white man, have admittedly gone through a large majority of my life with racial blinders on. While I have experienced prejudice given that I’m queer, that by no means equates my experiences with those of people of color. I think we all go through life with a form of blinders on that prevent us from seeing things from another perspective. And if we do our very best to remove those blinders, we can still make mistakes, even if we have the best of intentions in mind. Linus has worn his blinders not because he doesn’t believe that prejudice exists, but as a form of armor to keep himself safe. Zoe doesn’t dismantle his blinders for him. That shouldn’t be up to her to do. Instead, she is giving him the tools to do it himself, and this is the start of that. This line was originally longer, more involved, but I felt it diluted what I was trying to say. As it is now, it’s more to the point, and bitingly so.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. A six-year-old boy with spiders in his brain. The Antichrist, something dark and terrifying. While crafting Lucy’s character, I knew I wanted him to be an extreme. We have a were-Pomeranian, a garden gnome, a wyvern, a…Chauncey, and a forest sprite. But Lucy is something else entirely. And with him, I was able to explore the idea of nature versus nurture in ways more explicit than I might’ve been able to do with the other children. The idea of the Antichrist is in its name: the direct opposite of Christ. Light versus darkness. But what if he didn’t have to be what everyone expected him to be? What if, given the chance, he was able to defy his namesake? The idea that the most powerful child on the island (though Talia might have a thing or two to say about that) could shape the world to his wants and whims was interesting to me. Did he have to be what he was ordained he would be? No. He didn’t. And it's because of Arthur. Arthur, who believes in him, believes in all of them. Arthur, who could see past a title, and nurture, love, and support a boy who is just that: a boy. Evil is, for the most part, taught. And since that’s the case, then couldn’t the opposite be true? Arthur is light. Without him, without the other children, there was a chance Lucy could’ve been mired in darkness. But he isn’t because he’s taught that there is so much more he could be. He is more than what his name implies.

Linus’s character growth throughout the novel is probably one of the things I’m most proud of. He starts as a bland, somewhat boring man who keeps his head down, doing his job to the best of his ability. It’s not until he arrives at the island and begins to listen that he sees that just doing his job will no longer suffice. He takes what he’s learned from the others, and digs in deep, dismantling years and years of preconceived notions about the people he’s supposed to be helping. He has removed his blinders, so much so that he’s able to say these words to Sal who needs to hear them. Hate is loud, but we can be louder. At the same time, we have to take caution that in our loudness, we don’t drown out the voices trying to speak along with us.

Helen fascinates me. Originally, her name was Sally, a bit of a wonky worm in my brain that I didn’t know was there while writing (Linus, Lucy, Sally—yikes; apologies to Charles Schulz—and just now, I realized that I named another character Charles. Hoo boy). She is, at first, afraid just like everyone else is, though perhaps not to the same extent. In her first meeting with Talia in her garden shop—along with Linus and Lucy—she is wary, standoffish. But she moves quickly past that when she hears about Talia’s garden. It’s a connection, something that helps her relate to the people she was told she should fear. In her love of gardening that she shares with Talia, she’s able to pop her own bubble, remove her own blinders. It’s a simple thing, really. Should it have taken this meeting for her to see as much? No. It shouldn’t have, and she admits to this. She is quicker to accept the truth of things than Linus was because I think some part of her always knew she was in the wrong. Though I wish it didn’t have to be the case, sometimes, we don’t see how wrong we are until we have incontrovertible evidence staring right back at us. She has keen insight, which is why she’s a little aghast at the idea that Linus might leave. She can see just how much he means to the children, to Arthur, to Zoe, and how much they all mean to him. A home isn’t always a house. It can be people, too.

These are my favorite lines in the book, the ones I’m most proud of. To me, it cuts right down to the beating heart of the story. The idea of being “ordinary” often comes with a negative connotation behind it. Why would we want to be ordinary when we could be extraordinary? Linus doesn’t have magic. It could be said he is the exact opposite of magic. But sometimes, it takes a perfectly ordinary person to do extraordinary things. Out of all he’s witnessed, for me, being told there is magic in the ordinary (and coming from the six year old Antichrist, no less) is where Linus decides he needs to be seen and heard, not only for himself, but for those who need him to be that way.

From the mouth of babes…And yes, adults are so dumb. Thankfully, Lucy is there to say what everyone else is thinking. NOW KISS!!!!!

The original title of this book was DON’T YOU WISH YOU WERE HERE? This was taken from the mouse pad that sits on Linus’s desk at DICOMY, and was repeated a few times throughout the book as a motif for Linus and the reader. The publisher (and rightly so) wanted a title that sounded more fantasy-like. And so we scoured the book, looking for ideas. When we landed on THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA, I knew we’d found the right name. The title is one of the first things the reader sees. It felt fitting it would then also be one of the last things they’d read, a bit of lovely symmetry that I absolutely take no credit for, seeing as how my awesome editor came up with the new title. Now, I can’t imagine this novel being called anything else.

And here, at the end, I hope that when you’ve reached these final pages, you feel a sense of optimism, and perhaps hugged the book just a little. I hope these characters will stay with you because I know they’ve stuck with me far longer than many of the characters I’ve written. I won’t ever forget what this island has taught me, or the time I spent there, going on adventures. I hope you won’t either. But above all, I hope you realize that yes, there is darkness in the world, but there is also so much light. As I write this in the final months of the year that won’t seem to die—2020, ugh—I understand that even with all the light, even with all the wonder and joy and triumph that this world can bring, we still have work to do. I’m not so naïve that I think everything will always work out. Life is not fiction. There isn’t always a happy ending, no matter how much we wish there to be. However, that should not stop us from fighting with everything we have, to lift up those who have for so long had their voices ignored. Or worse, silenced. A story can be just that: a story. But I will always believe there is power in the written word, power to help enact change for the better. And that power is within us all. Hate is loud; I wouldn’t try and tell you otherwise. What I will say is that we can be louder. We can drown out the hate, letting it sink below the surface of a cerulean sea. We owe it to ourselves, and each other. Remove your blinders. Pop your bubble. Find a garden gnome or a wyvern or an amorphous green blob named Chauncey who wants nothing more than to be a bellhop, and fight and fight and fight to make this world how it should be. I know we can do it. I hope you do too.