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Books, publishing

New Way to Buy My Books!

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Friends, I have an exciting announcement to make: All five of my novels (Magic Most Deadly, Glamours & Gunshots, Death by Disguise, From the Shadows, and Pauline Gray Investigates) are now available to buy directly from StarDance Press! You may purchase the epub OR a signed paperback OR an unsigned paperback right from me, by clicking that new link at the top of my website that says “SHOP.”

This is not a step I had anticipated taking back at the start of this year, to be honest. I didn’t feel like I sold enough books to make it worthwhile to sell directly from my own website (I am not supposed to publicly admit that I don’t sell many of my books, but I’m tired of playing the game and would so much rather be honest than try to pretend to a level of success I haven’t actually achieved). However, Amazon’s model keeps turning ever more predatory, and with the rise of their “AI assist” for searching inside and summarizing books–which authors can’t opt out of–as well as them discontinuing support and download options for older Kindle models, I found myself facing another crossroads, similar to what I faced last year with the news that Meta had trained their AI model off a database of pirated books that included my own works.

I quit Facebook and Instagram then. It was a little harder (ok, a lot) to make the choice to pull my books from Amazon. I may not sell a lot of books, but by far the vast majority of sales that I make are through them. It felt as though pulling them, even if I set up a store to sell from my own website, would be the death knell of my self-publishing career.

These are the times that let you know exactly where your priorities are.

As I said above, I haven’t exactly had a spectacular career with selling my self-published books. Not because they aren’t good books, but because I have always struggled to find and connect with the right audience. Like with FB and Insta, Amazon kept alive the tantalizing hope that one day, somehow, I’d be able to connect all the right pieces and my books would suddenly take off. Sure, it hadn’t happened yet in the thirteen years since I first published the first edition of Magic Most Deadly, but there was always the chance …

At the end of July, I’ll be pulling all my books off Amazon. For now, ebooks will still be available through Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc, as well as directly through the new StarDance Press Shop. Paperbacks will still be available everywhere except Amazon as well–Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or special ordering directly from your local bookstore. However, signed paperbacks are only available from my shop or from buying from me in person! I’m done playing Amazon’s game of hoping that someday the algorithm will work in my favor. If this is it for my career as a self-published author, I’m ok with that–because all new life comes on the heels of the old life dying, and maybe it’s time for my self-publishing career to die so that something new can be born. Maybe from now on the only place I’ll sell these books will be in-person events–which could also be fun. I like people, I like connecting with them, I like talking face-to-face with them about stories, I like putting my physical books into their actual hands. I’ll be doing three in-person events this summer and one this fall, and I can’t wait for them.

And who knows? Maybe the shop will take off. Eventually I’d love to include bookmarks and stickers, perhaps more! (like the bookmarks I created from these fabulous designs of Maia and Len by scarvenartist, which I *do* include with every Whitney & Davies in-person book purchase).

I am excited to see what’s going to happen next, whatever that might look like. And I am excited to have more control over what I am able to sell to people. Let me know in the comments what other things you might be interested in purchasing if I made them available, or what you’re most excited about with this new shop. I am so thankful for all of you who have been following me or walking alongside me all through this topsy-turvy adventure of bringing my stories to the larger world!

**Note: I have not included the Pauline Gray novellas, Magic & Mayhem, or While Shepherds Watch in the shop yet. They will be pulled off Amazon with the novels at the end of July, but I haven’t yet decided if I’ll offer them in my shop or leave them only available through other retailers. I will let you all know once I’ve figured it out!**

Books, fantasy, favorites, fiction, mystery

Epic Sale of Beloved SFF 2025

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Friends, I have good news! The Epic Sale of Beloved SFF is BACK, running August 7-11 (tomorrow through Monday).

For those of you unfamiliar with this sale, it is a grand smorgasbord of fantasy and science fiction books, all of which have been recommended by other readers, though authors may choose to include others of their books in the sale as well. Glamours & Gunshots is my reader-recommended book, and I am including Magic Most Deadly and Death by Disguise. This means that each novel in the Whitney & Davies series will be on sale (Aug 7-11) for $0.99! If you have one or two books in the series and have been wanting to complete it, now is your chance.

If you have wondered about the series but were never quite sure about giving it a try, you can either start with Book 1 (Magic Most Deadly) for $0.99

… or try Book 2 (Glamours & Gunshots) for $0.99 to see just why it is reader-recommended

… or take a walk on the wild side and start with Book 3 (Death by Disguise), which is set in a magical college in Cambridge (the one in England, not Massachusetts) and won the 2023 Maine Literary Award for Speculative Fiction.

Or why not try all three, for less than $3.00 total?

In addition to my books, there are over 100 other SFF (science fiction and fantasy) books for sale either for free or $0.99 in this sale. Last year I took advantage of the sale to try out JA Andrews’ Keeper Chronicles, and found them delightful stories. I’m looking forward to discovering new gems this year! Who knows what other treats you might find as well?

Please feel free to spread the news of the sale to all your friends who also enjoy sci fi and fantasy stories. If you know anyone who might think “1920s detective stories with magic” sounds like a fabulous concept, then please do recommend they give Whitney & Davies a try! The price will never be lower than during this sale, which means there will never be a better time than this to buy!

Books, writing

Creative Work and AI–My Story

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Back in March, I started seeing links to the Atlantic article allowing writers to see if their work had been pirated by LibGen and then used by Meta to train their AI program. I doubted that any of my work was in that database, due to its comparatively low popularity on Amazon and other bookselling sites, but I checked anyway.

Friends, nothing prepares you for the gut-punch that is learning your creative work has been stolen to train a so-called “artificial intelligence” program (which in reality is nothing more than applied statistics, nothing “intelligent” about it). It’s hard enough knowing your work has been pirated; far worse is knowing that said pirating is being used in a way that is destructive to all human creativity and for no other purpose but to put yet more money in a billionaire’s pocket.

Both Magic Most Deadly and Glamours & Gunshots came up in the LibGen database. Two books that I poured my heart and soul into to try to tell the story in the truest and most faithful way I could. Ripped off to plug words and phrases into a computer program in an attempt to mimic genuine creative work but has no soul or mind behind it.

I am not ok with this.

As a result of this violation of my work, I have deactivated my accounts with Meta. You will no longer be able to find me on FB or IG. I don’t have accounts with any other social media sites, so the only place to find me from now on will be here on my website, or via my newsletter.

Conventional wisdom says that authors can’t make it these days without a social media platform. Maybe that’s true–but I can’t stomach tacitly supporting this kind of destructive work. (My daughters are delighted by this choice–they keep telling me all that they’ve learned about how invasive and harmful social media is, and have been trying to get me off of all of those sites for ages now.)

As for my own work–I can’t do anything about what’s already been taken from me. But I’m not letting that stop me from continuing to create. I hit 100 pages in the handwritten draft of Whitney & Davies #4 last week, and am excited about where the story is going. When the time comes, I will publish this book as well. I will include something in the copyright about not using this work for AI training, which may not stop such things from happening but at least puts more laws on my side.

We keep going, friends. That’s all we can do.

1920s, Books, fantasy, world-building, writing

World-Building Magic: Clothing & Fashion

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When I first wrote Magic Most Deadly, I had intended Julia to be Maia’s friend-and-sidekick throughout the series, but when that book ended with (mild spoiler) Maia trotting off to London while Julia stayed in Hertfordshire, I realized that was not going to work. So when I started Glamours and Gunshots, I knew I needed a new friend for Maia … but I also knew I wanted her to be a well-rounded character in her own right, not simply a foil for Maia, but a person with her own interests and pursuits, who could easily have been the protagonist of her own story had circumstances been different. I also wanted her to be quite different from Maia so that their personalities could balance and complement each other.

And thus was born Helen Radcliffe, a magician born of one of England’s oldest and most respected magical families, someone who (unlike Maia) had grown up steeped in the world of magic from the time it had blossomed in her, and whose struggle at the time of this story was in trying to reconcile her passion (blending magic with fashion and clothing design) with her mother’s expectations for her career–for in England, it is rare for any magician not to have a career, whether they be female or male. There may be differing opinions on what careers are most appropriate for the different genders, but mostly one’s career is determined on one’s magical bent and abilities … and sometimes one’s family’s expectations.

Helen has a keen eye for fashion design and a knack for using common magics in unique ways. Glamours, a image laid over reality that only other magicians can see, tend to be used mostly for disguise or children’s entertainment. Helen weaves glamours into clothing to … well, I don’t want to give too much away, but here’s the passage where she and Maia first discuss the possibilities of fashion magic:

“Oh, I’ve even thought of having clothing that tells a story only to other magicians, with a glamour–an overlay in the color of one’s own magical aura, showing significant events in one’s life or symbols of one’s magical specialty.”

image courtesy of the MFA, Boston.
Imagine the overlay to be woven through with magical light rather than being plain lace, and you’ll have a fairly decent idea of what Helen is describing.

Helen also says:

“Imagine, Maia, a gown which changes color based on how one wants to appear–if you were cheerful, for example, you could make it yellow, and if you wanted to be more somber you could change it to navy blue with a spoken word. Or one that enhances your natural charms. Or, well, anything! A dress with embroidered birds on it who really sing, or trees and vines,” motioning to the design on the hem of Maia’s skirt, “that show fruit in autumn, flowers in spring, and leaves in autumn. The possibilities are endless.”

I can’t find the proper attribution for this image; my hunch is that it’s from the Met but I can’t confirm that. In any case, this is a good example of the type of embroidery that Helen would bring to life with her magic.

(both passages from Glamours and Gunshots, page 56)

Maia, though far from interested in fashion herself, is quick to see the brilliance in this, and encourages Helen to follow her passion and prove to the world–and, more importantly, her mother–just how impressive fashion magic can be.

Later in Death by Disguise we learn that Helen has started using magic in more practical ways as well as spectacular when it comes to clothing magic–Maia has every traveler’s dream, clothing that folds to the size of a pocket handkerchief and when unfolded has no wrinkles. When discussing the practical aspects of this with some fans online, we all started brainstorming other ideas that haven’t (yet) made it to the page: self-darning stockings and other knits, spells to keep dirt away from one’s clothes, self-folding clothes (something everyone who has ever done laundry longs for, I think–imagine taking perfectly folded clothes out of the dryer!), and so on.

The trick with all of this, of course, is that magic, as part of the natural world, only works on natural fibers–nothing synthetic. As this is the 1920s, many of the fabrics generally used in clothing are beginning to the move away from all-natural (linen, cotton, silk, etc), to part-natural or wholly synthetic (rayon, for example–derived of natural materials but treated with a chemical process such as renders it nearly wholly artificial so far as magic is concerned). It isn’t a problem for Helen right now, as this movement from natural to synthetic is in its earliest stages, but the astute reader can guess that in the next several decades this could become a much more serious issue. Which might even lead to some pondering on what happens to magic in a world that is increasingly removed from nature and focused on synthetics …

But for now, Helen’s business is thriving as her imagination and talents allow her to explore ever-more fascinating aspects of blending magic, fashion, and practicality. Where will it take her next? That, my friends, is a story for another time!

This is a vintage pattern from the 1920s–see the fabric draping from the shoulders on the green dress? Imagine that fabric instead being living light, and imagine the entire thing being able to be folded to the size of a pocket handkerchief, and you’ll see what sort of dinner dress Maia had packed for her trip to Cambridge.
1920s, world-building, writing

World-Building Magic: Intro

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I thought it might be fun to do a blog post series that gives a deeper dive into some of the magical aspects of the Whitney & Davies world. Just as writing Julia’s story (currently available only to newsletter subscribers–if you subscribe to the newsletter and have not gotten the links to all three parts of Julia’s story, get in touch and I’ll send them to you directly) gave me a chance to explore the lives of other characters outside our main protagonists, I thought this series might give me a chance to explore the world beyond the spells and magical abilities Maia and Len use and develop in the course of their stories. And who knows? We may yet see a story or two that picks up on some of the aspects that get covered in this series, or at least is inspired by these posts! No promises, but we can all hope …

Some of these topics have been ones I’ve discussed with friends-of-the-series on various social media sites. I had a glorious discussion about different aspects of clothing magic around the time I published Death by Disguise on the site that used to evoke bird noises and is now a letter of the alphabet, and on Tumblr not too long ago on all the different types of magical craftsmanship there could be.

Some have come about as a result of working through implications of other world-building details in the novels, or through some of the short stories that go along with them. Patricia C Wrede has written of two different kinds of world-building camps that writers tend to fall into: soap bubble world building (where your world starts out with a few shiny ideas and gradually keeps expanding as you write) and iceberg world building (where you have developed your world fully before you ever start writing and your stories only ever show the smallest amount of the world you’ve developed). I am more of the soap builder type, because I tend to be an exploratory writer in general–if I focus on too many details before I start writing the story I lose the impetus to write at all. Finding out what happens next, keeping up with the story as it grows, letting it take me into unexpected places … that’s what keeps me writing. And so much of my world-building is also exploratory–let’s find out what is behind that bend in the road, shall we? Only now I’ve explored enough of the world of Whitney & Davies to start sharing some of those fun details with you. Things like Helen’s fashion magic, what the Circle really does, how does healing magic work, what about those different types of magical craftsmanship, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to come closer to figuring out what makes Maia and Len able to see each other’s magical auras when that’s supposed to be impossible.

The first post will be on clothing magic–specifically what Helen is doing for her career, but other practical uses of magic on and with clothing. I’m mostly taking the winter off from social media and the internet, so that post will likely not be up until early February. And then we’ll go from there!

goals, seasons, writing

“Play”

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Happy 2025! I would say it’s hard to believe we’re in a new year already, but if I’m honest, 2024 felt like it was about a million years long. As I was going through photos from the year in trying to put together a year-end review for the newsletter (which IS coming soon, subscribers, I promise!) I realized that I had almost entirely forgotten everything that had happened before July, or at least had sort of vaguely assumed it happened in 2023. So yes, I can believe we’re in a new year at last, and I’m very thankful to be so. Four deaths in the family in less than six months is hard beyond my ability to put into words.

I don’t tend to make New Year’s Resolutions, though I do like to set some goals for myself in January of things I would like to accomplish over the course of the year. If you’re interested in those goals so far as writing is concerned, I’m sharing those in my upcoming newsletter, so feel free to subscribe to that here:

Several years ago I jumped on the “word for the year” bandwagon, but I found that, much like New Year resolutions, I had a strong tendency to forget all about my chosen word round about March and just carry on with life. So I quit deliberately picking a word. However, last year, a word ended up picking me partway through the year, and in like manner, this morning a word popped into my head and told me it was my word for this year.

And this word bodes well for the upcoming twelve months:

I have been reminded over and over again in the last few months of the need for playfulness in my life and in my writing. I have developed over the last few decades into the type of person who always has to have a plan, and a backup plan, account for all possibilities, and maintain a strong work ethic in order to get everything accomplished that is necessary. None of those are bad traits, necessarily, but when they are not balanced by the ability to have fun and let loose at times … well, let’s just say that there are times when I am unbearably bored with myself. And unfortunately, I also often get bored with my writing! It is good to take this work seriously–but I also need to remember to have fun with it. Robert Frost famously said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” but I think it’s equally true that if the writer isn’t having fun, the reader won’t either. Even if the story is not a particularly playful one, the writer still ought to be able to enjoy playing with words, following the story where it goes, trying to capture its magic on paper with joyful zest instead of grim determination. Or at least, this writer ought. I’m not going to tell anyone else how they ought to be writing (or living)!

So this year, I am going to be developing my playful side. I am going to be purposeful in letting go sometimes, of letting things happen and just enjoying them. I am going to write silly nonsense for my own amusement, play with words and stories, even allow myself to be goofy. Whether any of those words are seen by anyone else is irrelevant–the enjoyment of them will be in the making.

I don’t have a set plan for this–in large part because putting together a plan for playfulness is entirely counter to the very idea of playfulness–but this is the mindset and attitude I intend to focus on this year. And you know what?

I can’t wait!

Happy 2025, everyone. Let’s play this year!

Life Talk, seasons, writing

Golden September Days & Crisp Nights

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The headline refers to both how September has been this year, and also to a few literary quotes:

That September was a month of golden mists and purple hazes […] a month of sun-steeped days and of nights that were swimming in moonlight or pulsating with stars.

-Anne’s House of Dreams, LM Montgomery

September came in with golden days and silver nights …

-The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien

And from one of my favorite lesser-known books:

September was very Septemberish that year.

-Betsy in Spite of Herself, Maud Hart Lovelace

September has indeed been surprisingly Septemberish in New England this year! Golden days that are warm but not summer-hot, cool nights with crisp air, leaves just starting to turn colors, and the glorious promise of a proper autumn just around the corner. My kids were thrilled to be able to start the school year without sweltering heat, and I have enjoyed being able to open my office windows at work during the day instead of needing the air conditioner to keep the temperature bearable.

“But how is the writing coming?” I hear you ask in plaintive tones, enjoying the description of the weather but much more interested in story updates. (At least, I hope that’s what I am hearing from you …)

Writing Update

Never fear, writing is happening! Slowly, as I am making some health discoveries which are prompting some changes to my lifestyle (more about that once I have something a bit more concrete to share–right now everything is still fairly nebulous), but writing nonetheless. I have finally had a chance to browse through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which my good friend A.M. Offenwanger has been recommending to me for years. I’m not quite in a place to do the full twelve-week workshop, but I have started trying to incorporate daily morning pages (3 handwritten pages or half an hour of writing, whichever comes first) and weekly artist dates (trying being the operative word there … I’m not very good at thinking up outings that refill my creative cup) into my routine. And just last night, I began work on Julia Part 3–the final installment of Julia’s story, to be shared with newsletter subscribers sometime this fall! I am also nearly done with the first draft of Len’s holiday short story. I’d still like to have that available for purchase for this holiday season, but we’ll have to see–I am learning to be cautious in my goals, given my current energy levels (low. They are low. But we’re figuring out why and making progress toward improvement).

Book Selling

At the end of August I took part in a book festival for authors in my part of New England, and had a blast. I used to help sell my sister’s hand-crafted silver jewelry at craft shows when I was a teen, and I’d almost forgotten the fun of interacting with people and working with them to try to match them to their perfect purchase. Books are a little different from earrings, bracelets, and necklaces–you either like a genre or you don’t, and if I happen to write in a genre you don’t like, there’s not a whole lot either of us can do about that–but it’s still fun. I’ve been researching other local (or local-ish) events I can sell my books at, now that I’ve remembered how much I enjoy this sort of thing. There are a couple of Christmas artisans markets locally that I’ve asked if they’ll accept independently-published books at, and one huge fall festival that I am too late to apply this year for, but will definitely be visiting in hopes of getting an idea what it might be like to do it next year (well, that and purchasing Christmas presents early–two birds with one stone). I’ve learned I would far rather sell my books in person than attempting to do it through social media marketing!

New Start

Between Carl’s years in grad school, the years homeschooling the girls, and my own brief time recently as a returned student myself, September has always felt like the start of a new year, even more than January 1. While I’m not starting any major projects this year, it still feels like a fresh start on the ongoing projects, and a fresh look at the way I market and sell my books. I am excited to see what the upcoming “year” holds for my writing career–and looking forward to sharing the adventure with you all as it happens.

1920s, fiction, newsletter, stories, writing

Julia Part 2, Coming Thursday

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If you have been waiting to subscribe to the StarDance Press newsletter, now is a good time! Coming Thursday is the EXCLUSIVE release of Part 2 of Julia’s story (and no worries if you were not able to download the first part–there’s a link to that in the email as well). Part 1 left off with Julia determined to uncover a secret, and Part 2 shows us how that’s going. Part 3, hopefully coming this fall, will wrap up the story!

These story snippets have been so much fun to write. They have a very different feel from either the novels or the short stories I’ve written in this world previously, being much more character focused, with the plot mostly existing to move along the character development. They are also giving me a chance to go a bit more in depth with some of the world-building that is only ever alluded to in my other works.

Plus, they are a fun perk for newsletter subscribers! It’s always lovely to be able to offer people a “thank-you” for subscribing to my thoughts on writing, reading, and life each month.

So again, if you haven’t already done so, now is the time to subscribe! Aside from occasional sale and new release information (and gifts, like this one), I send the newsletter out once a month, and my goal is to always make it a pleasant oasis in the midst of your busy life. And if you subscribe now and decide after a month or so that it’s not for you, you can always unsubscribe with no hard feelings.

So if Julia’s story sounds like something you’d enjoy reading, and the newsletter itself sounds like fun, subscribe today in order to get the new story on Thursday!

1920s, characters, newsletter, stories, writing

Julia’s Story

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I took the month of January off from social media (and fiction reading, which was much, much harder), in part because I was hoping it would give me the time and space I needed to start figuring out some better ways to connect with readers and potential readers, whether it be through this blog, my newsletter, social media, or something else. Maia and Len have never had a particularly large following, and I’ve always struggled with finding ways to get their stories into the hands of more readers.

One idea that I had was that of writing little “story snippets,” or “Whitney & Davies Extras”–that is, brief scenes from the point of view of characters other than our main duo, set either during or after the books–and offering those to newsletter subscribers. The first such character I thought of, naturally, having just recently finished re-writing Magic Most Deadly, was Maia’s friend and the hostess of the house party that is the setting for the story, Julia Foy.

In the original edition of Magic Most Deadly, Julia played a much larger role than I was able to give her in the new edition, and proved to have a sneaking suspicion of magic’s existence, despite her inability to use it. I always had an idea of where I wanted to go with that idea, but was never able to fit it into any of the other books, and then some of the world-building details that developed as I wrote those books seemed to contradict the idea that a non-magic user could be aware of magic’s existence.

But Julia still had a story of her own that she wanted told, and as I started writing the story snippet for her, set at the end of Magic Most Deadly, I started to get an inkling of what that story was supposed to be. It is too much to be told in one snippet, however–especially since it develops right alongside the series. I foresee at least three parts, possibly more: the first taking place at the end of MMD, the second at the end of Glamours & Gunshots, and the third most likely happening around the time of Death by Disguise.

I’m excited to share more about Julia’s character and her story with readers! If you are interested in reading more about her, subscribe to my newsletter before the end of the month, as the first of her story snippets will be released exclusively to newsletter subscribers in the newsletter that will go out on March 1st.

I had originally planned to released a Becket snippet next, sometime this spring, but I think I’ll have to get all of Julia’s story out first, and then start exploring Becket’s character after that, later in the year.

This is a fun way for me to explore more of the world of Whitney & Davies without having to focus so exclusively on Maia and Len and the magical mysteries they are called upon to solve, and I hope it will be a fun way for readers to immerse themselves further into that world, and make it a place new readers want to come and visit and hopefully stay a while, as well.

(If you have suggestions for things you’d like to see more of in the Whitney & Davies world, or something you think would be a good draw to help attract new readers to the series, feel free to leave a comment letting me know–I’m still exploring ideas and options, and I welcome input!)

1920s, world-building, writing

Len’s Unreliable (But Gorgeous) Automobile

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It’s been a subtle running joke in the Whitney & Davies books ever since Glamours & Gunshots that Len is a keen driver but has the most unreliable vehicle known to man. I recently started working on a holiday short story (hoping to have it ready to publish by next Christmas season, for newsletter subscribers at least if not the wider public) that opens with his car quitting on him in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. What happens as a result of that will, of course, have to be saved for the story itself, but the opening did prompt me to at last settle on the details of just what exactly Len is driving.

I knew he’d want something sporty and fast, but also practical. A 4-seater touring car–or “tourer” as they were called in Great Britain–was indicated. I knew enough about older vehicles from researching them for the second Pauline Gray novella to decide on that much. A little bit of research then led to me the Vauxhall 30-98, also known as the Vauxhall Velox tourer. It was considered a sports car for its day (perhaps not as impressive as a Bentley, I discovered as I read further, but wholly British, generally reliable (unless you’re Len), and an iconic car of England in the 1920s.

Then I found the photo above, and I knew at once that was Len’s car. Look at it! It simply screams, “Len!” to me. The only difficulty is that that particular car is a 1924 model, and int he new edition of Magic Most Deadly I establish that Len’s had an unreliable car since at least 1921. Do I allow the discrepancy to slide, or will it annoy me forevermore if I give him a car that’s three years newer than it should be? (Answer: even if I say I will let it slide, it will annoy me forever)

Then the answer came to me: clearly the above car is Len’s second vehicle, his first finally breaking down irrevocably, forcing him to buy a new one … only this one has all the same problems as the first, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not with the automobiles … it’s with Len.

That settles the discrepancy, and is also far more funny than if I had just let it slide. Poor Len!

(Adding insult to injury, I’ve decided just now, Maia has little interest in cars but is able to drive when she must, and never has the smallest amount of difficulty even with the crankiest of cars. Len finds this incredibly unfair, and Maia cannot understand why he can’t simply make them work. Alas that his magic won’t do a thing for cars!)

I think this was his first car … also a Vauxhall Velox tourer, but a 1920 model, and while very elegant, not as striking as the shiny red and silver of the 1924 model.

My editor is right–details like this may seem irrelevant at first (she is always having to remind me to include more detail in my stories), but boy do they add a lot of depth! In figuring out his car, I’ve also learned something new about Len himself, and about Maia to a certain extent. And I had a good bit of fun while doing it, too!

Next I’ll be needing to teach myself exactly how cars were manufactured in the ’20s so that I can determine whether any magic at all would work on them, or if they are immune. The rabbit-trail world-building has only just begun!