Brain Matter

 Catherine Cavendish is the author of  several novels and novellas, including The Devil's Serenade, Dark Avenging Angel, Saving Grace Devine, and The Pendle Curse. Today she's here to talk about some rather unsettling imaginary friends. When you were growing up, did you have an imaginary friend? Did they seem real to you? Maybe sort-of-real. You could talk to them, imagine their responses, play with them - but you probably kept the ‘relationship’ within certain boundaries, however young you were. In my case, I invented an entire family of siblings – three sisters (two older, one a few years younger) and an older brother who looked out for us girls. Being an only child, I found them comforting, and fun, but I never imagined them to be real. They, in turn, kept themselves firmly lodged in my own mind and never attempted to cross any boundary into the real world. In my novel, The Devil’s Serenade, my central character also had an imaginary family when she was a child