With Death by Disguise releasing in less than a week (November 8! Pre-order your copy here!), I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a retrospect on the previous books in the series. I’m starting today with Magic Most Deadly, my debut novel and the story that kicked off the Whitney and Davies series.
This book came about after a period of intense research and drafting of a high-concept fantasy story that never ended up being written because I had burned myself out on all the prep. I wanted to write something fun after all that, but couldn’t decide what. I had recently read Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer’s “Sorcery and Cecilia,” and loved the idea of picking a genre and adding magic to it. Not Jane Austen/Georgette Heyer for me, though … I looked at my bookshelves, saw Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence books, and thought, “Hm, Agatha Christie with magic?” Then I thought, “Maybe if I swapped the personalities, so the guy was the one who was intuitive and impulsive, and the girl was steady and logical.”
And thus Magic Most Deadly, and the world of Whitney and Davies, was born.
I decided early on in the writing process that I wanted to self-publish it. Aside from “Sorcery & Cecilia,” there weren’t a lot of stories being published at that time that blended an existing genre with magic, and the popular trend in mysteries was toward dark and bleak, so I didn’t think there would be much of a market for this type of story in traditional publishing. Plus, I was intrigued by the possibilities with self-publishing and thought it would be fun to try. Whether or not that was a wise choice is a post for another day!
Next September will mark ten years since I published Magic Most Deadly. Since then, I’ve published two more novels (Death by Disguise will make three), four novellas, and a collection of four short stories. It’s safe to say I’ve learned a lot, both about writing and about publishing, since then! Despite how much my writing has developed from that time, though, I am still very proud of my first novel. It was a labor of love, born from a desire to find joy and fun in writing again, an homage to one of the greatest authors in the English language while still being very much my own story, and an act of bravery, to say, “here is the story of my heart: I hope you read it and love it.”
Nearly ten years later, I still say that with every story I write and publish.
I should re-read this. It was and still is a great book.
Thank you! I tend to be overly critical of my writing in this one, but I have been reminding myself lately that for a debut novel, it’s pretty darn good, and if I didn’t quite hit every high mark I aimed for in it, that’s still better than aiming low.