Not today so much, but a couple of days ago, when I wrote my latest Cabinet story, it was crazy windy--a speaking wind, you know, the kind that mutters and howls and woooos. And our Cabinet theme for March is wind (I know, original right?). IT WAS A SIGN.

My story is a perversion of that strange and lovely George Macdonald classic, At the Back of the North Wind. As a child I read that book over and over. I wanted more books like that, dense and rich and not always fully parseable, at least to...