I was always dressing up as a kid in the backyard, building some sort of fort and having battles against imaginary enemies. It's often that same feeling when you're pretending for a living, but it's with bigger toys.
So long as I can remember, my siblings and I would have 'Star Wars' action figures or Fisher-Price action figures, and we would build these sprawling compounds.
Graphic novels are all about fantasies. Superman and Batman started it. It's like a reaction to environment around you. You desire to do things in comic books or films what you can't do in real life.
When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.
I remember living in a pretty small neighborhood where you could play in the streets and run around like crazy. My friends and I would ride our bikes around, but instead of just riding our bikes, we were solving crimes and going out in the woods to see what lay out there.
Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid.
If you can tune into the fantasy life of an 11-year-old girl, you can make a fortune in this business.
