Catapult | Finding the Secret Door Into Your Novel | Julia Fine

I'm currently circling my next novel, knocking on doors and peering through fences, trying to find a way in. The most visceral way I can describe this is by having you listen to Rebecca Luker sing the opening few lines of the 1991 Broadway adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. A little trill of hammered dulcimer, the siren of Luker's soprano-it's a thirty-second peek into a luscious, blooming world before we jump to poor, sallow Mary Lennox in India watching everyone she knows die of cholera. Throughout the show, Mary will, as in the book, be sent to her uncle's estate in Yorkshire to discover the key to the eponymous garden, then the door, and then she'll enter and bring the whole thing to life.