Jennifer Vido : What inspired you to write Once Upon a Wardrobe? Patti Callahan: It’s so hard to answer what inspired me for this novel and yet that very fact is what inspired me to write this book! I often wonder what inspired some of my favorite tales, and when I interview other authors for Friends and Fiction, I ask other authors, “What is the origin story of your story?” And even I am often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” And the answer changes with time because we might look back and see where a story originated in hindsight. So this novel, Once Upon a Wardrobe, is a story that grew out of many other stories. When I was writing the novel Becoming Mrs. Lewis, I realized that the year that C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman met through letters was the same year that The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was released. During research, I would often see small crumbs of Narnia in C. S. Lewis’ young and middle life. Those crumbs stayed with me and I wanted to show them in a story. I wondered — What made Lewis start and then stop and then…
