If I Could Step Into a Book for One Day…
Have you ever read a book and wished you could step through the pages?
Not become one of the characters. Not fight the villain or save the world.
Just… visit.
Walk the streets. Eat the food. See the places you’ve imagined so many times that they almost feel like somewhere you’ve actually been.
I have a few.
First Stop: The Wizarding World
If I’m stepping into Harry Potter’s world, let’s be clear about one thing:
I’m not visiting the Muggle side. I already live there.
I want the magic.
I actually got a little glimpse of what that might feel like recently when my family and I visited Universal Studios and stepped into their version of the Wizarding World.
There’s something wonderfully strange about walking into a place you’ve only known through books and movies and suddenly seeing it all around you. For a little while, you get to play along and pretend that maybe you’ve crossed over into that world after all.
And naturally, it only made me want the real thing more.
I want to walk through Diagon Alley and look through every shop window. I want to see Hogwarts. I want to sit in the Great Hall and watch candles floating overhead.
I’d probably spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at things everyone else in that world considers completely ordinary.
Moving photographs? Fascinating.
Owls delivering mail? I’m watching.
Staircases that decide they’d rather go somewhere else? Probably inconvenient if you live there. Delightful if you’re visiting.
And, of course, I’d need a wand.
Would I actually want to live there? Considering the alarming number of dangerous things that seem to happen around Hogwarts, perhaps not.
But for a day?
Absolutely.
Then Take Me to Velaris
Velaris from Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series is another easy choice.
It’s not just the magic that draws me there.
It’s the beauty. The mountains. The Sidra. The lights. The artists and shops. The feeling of this beautiful city tucked away and protected from the rest of the world.
I’d want to wander.
No battles. No quests. Nobody needs me to save Prythian.
Just give me a beautiful evening in Velaris, something good to eat, and plenty of time to explore.
That’s my kind of fantasy adventure.
And Crescent City
Then there’s Crescent City.
This one fascinates me for a different reason because it’s a fantasy world that feels surprisingly modern.
Magic and technology exist together. There are restaurants, apartments and nightlife alongside angels, fae, shifters and all sorts of supernatural beings.
It feels recognizable and completely impossible at the same time.
I’d want to walk the city simply to see what everyday life looks like there.
Although, considering what happens in those books, I would like my visit scheduled for a particularly uneventful Tuesday.
And Then There’s San Francisco
This one is different.
San Francisco isn’t imaginary.
I’ve been there many times, and I love it.
There’s something about the city — the hills, the fog, the old buildings tucked between the new ones, the neighborhoods, the water, and the feeling that you can turn a corner and suddenly find yourself somewhere completely different.
Maybe that’s why, when I began creating the world that would eventually become Prelude to a Storm and the larger series that follows it, San Francisco felt right.
I didn’t need to invent the entire place.
I could take a city I already loved and quietly ask: What if there were things happening here that ordinary people couldn’t see?
What if magic existed behind those buildings?
What if ancient beings walked those streets?
What if the city we know was only one layer of the world?
Suddenly, somewhere real became somewhere else entirely.
Maybe That’s What Great Worlds Do
The places we remember from books aren’t always the biggest or most elaborate. They’re the ones that somehow begin to feel real. We know what the air might feel like.
We can imagine the streets.
We know where we’d want to sit, what we’d want to explore, and which places we’d probably avoid after dark.
Eventually, the setting stops feeling like a backdrop. It becomes a place. And sometimes, when we open the book again, it feels a little like going back.
That’s one of my favorite things about reading. And now that I’m creating worlds of my own, it’s something I hope to give my readers, too.
Maybe someday someone will read one of my stories and think:
I’d like to go there.
Even if it’s only for a day.
What fictional world would you visit if you could step through the pages for one day?
I’d love to know.
And if you’d like to wander through some of the worlds I’m creating, you can find the different doors into 12 Angels Publishing at iggylife.com.
