Electrico sitting on the platform out in front of the carnival and I didn’t know what to say. One part, in particular, sparked my imagination:

I read an interview with Ray Bradbury in The Paris Review, and he told a story about how meeting a circus performer as a boy made him want to become a writer. I knew he desperately wanted to fix things, but he didn’t have much time left. I pictured him as an old man with regrets, someone who had been full of magic (in the literal sense) as a child but who had never fulfilled his dreams because life had gotten in his way. Micah’s grandfather, Ephraim Tuttle, was one of the first characters I came up with. And I was deeply pleased with both options. That feeling of being on the verge of something important and unknown and that certainty that what you say and do in the moment matters a great deal…Īs for my fortune, she said that I would be a teacher or a nurse when I grew up. I was a lot younger then than Ephraim and Micah are in this story, but I tried to capture that same sense of wonder when I was writing scenes between them and the Lightbender. I still remember how momentous it felt, to have a mysteriously-dressed adult paying attention to everything I said and examining my palm. I had never met a fortune teller, or any kind of magician, and I took the whole experience very seriously. It was nighttime, and after the hay ride and pancakes we visited the fortune teller. I didn’t really think Circus Mirandus was a diesel fuel and funnel cake kind of place, so it became “grass and smoke and chocolate cake” in the book.Īnd my earliest carnival memory took place at a different, much tinier Fall Festival. In my memory, it smells like grass, diesel fuel motors, and funnel cake. We always went at night, and I kept finding myself automatically setting all the circus scenes at night, even when it didn’t make any sense. And I was also influenced by my memories of the local fair that my parents took me to see every year when I was little. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about all the things I would like to have at a magic circus.

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley