“That is a documented psychological fact of humanity. “Part of how we learn as humans to have empathy and to treat other people as people is by seeing them in a story,” she said. Regan flees the school for fear of judgment from her classmates and after walking through a mysterious door finds herself in a fantasy world. When her parents reveal that she has the real-life condition called androgen insensitivity, which means that the character is genetically male but has the physical traits of a woman, Regan confides to her best friend who responds cruelly. “Across the Green Grass Fields” tells the story of Regan Lewis, a young girl who is both a witness to and victim of bullying at school. Like Dorothy, she eventually went back to Oz to live forever, but that’s not what we remember.”

“But even in portal fantasy, we remember the male characters as having the more hero within and the female characters get remembered for getting pushed out of their fantasy worlds. “The only sub-genre of fantastic literature for children that is dominated by female characters is portal fantasy,” she said. While part of the series, “Across the Green Grass Fields” can also be read as a stand-alone.

McGuire is a fan of portal fantasy, which is when characters are transported from one world to another as in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” or “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” That’s the theme of her Wayward Children series, which tells the stories of Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, a residence for those having difficulty adjusting after returning from portal fantasy worlds. I can’t worry about, ‘Do I feel creative today?’ What I worry about is, ‘Can I pay my bills if I blow a deadline?’ “My mortgage is 100 percent paid by me writing and publishing books … but I don’t get to sit around and wait to feel inspired.

“I fear homelessness more than one probably should fear it, and homelessness is a terrible situation,” the 43-year-old said during a recent phone interview. Having spent some of her formative years homeless in Concord in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay area, McGuire, who now lives north of Seattle with her four cats, said that though she’s fortunate enough to make a living doing what she loves, she doesn’t take it for granted. She has a slew of projects that will be published this year, including the 15th book in her October Daye series, “When Sorrows Come,” out in September through Penguin Random House, and her latest, “Across the Green Grass Fields,” the sixth entry in her Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series, which was published by Tor in January. Author Seanan McGuire hasn’t let the pandemic slow down her writing.

Seanan mcguire in an absent dream