I didn't forget the dreams, I just didn't realize they could still have such an impact on me as an adult. I didn't realize I was writing my childhood dreams until I was on the second or third draft of this story.

If they were worth lying about, they must be really good. Once I became a teenager and realized that my fears had been overblown, I was dying to try drugs to see what the fuss was all about. Of course, now it is widely accepted that fear-mongering campaigns often backfire. If you touched a user it would enter your system, and you'd want to use too. And I dreamed about a drug that spread like a plague. I had nightmares about drugs, about not being able to resist trying them, even though I knew they would kill me. I wouldn't tell my parents why, so they were awfully perturbed, but my clothes were contaminated.

Afterward, I refused to wear any of the clothes I'd had on that day, including even hair barrettes and my backpack. It looked a little strange to me and I decided it must be from a joint. One day, when I was around eight or nine years old, I was walking home from school and I stepped on a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. I remember there was one video we watched where a cloud of marijuana smoke followed a boy around and made him do awful things. When I was in elementary school, anti-drug campaigns tended to have a much stronger scared straight component than they usually do now. Less direct inspirations came from some of my childhood fears and from the anti-drug campaigns in American schools in the 1990s. It is included in the appendix of my book. The most direct inspiration was the poem, 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti. I thought I'd write this review to let people know a little more about the inspiration behind Goblin Fruit.

Goblin Fruit by Erin Burr