It’s vaguely amusing that 22-year-old Glee star Chris Colfer made Time’s 2011 list of the world’s 100 most influential people, while the well-established, successful TV impresario who made him famous—Glee creator Ryan Murphy—didn’t. (Not to mention the rest of the show’s stars, writers, and creators.) But Colfer consistently seems to have his hands in more pies, and his face in more places, than most of the rest of his peers, and he’s earned a reputation as an up-and-comer ambitious enough to not want to be limited by genre or medium. His ambition has extended to writing, producing, and starring in a feature film (Struck By Lightning, which premièred at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and was picked up for distribution earlier this year); writing a TV pilot for Disney; and now writing an elaborate fairy-tale novel, The Land Of Stories: The Wishing Spell. Like Glee itself, The Wishing Spell occupies an odd middle ground in terms of suggested audience age—the simple voice and familiar tropes suggest it’s a kids’ book, but the 400-page-plus length and narrative complexity seem aimed at an older audience—but it’s a sophisticated first effort, suggesting a writer who grew up on fairy tales and couldn’t wait to get his own oar in the much-traveled waters.
