That Magic Mischief
I have been always been interested in metaphysical topics and considered myself to be open-minded — until, on a trip to the Southwest, I saw an ad for a past-life regression/séance slumber party in a free Taos newspaper.
It made me laugh, and I thought, ‘What would these people do if something did come over from the other side, or the outer dimensions?’
That’s what happens to my heroine in That Magic Mischief: Annabelle Walsh is an over-the-counter witch who gets more than she bargains fo, when a spell she does actually works. She summons a Pooka, a shapeshifting, Celtic mythological being who helps her turn her life around, by turning everything in her life upside down.
I made Annabelle's apartment one I lived in, in Brooklyn, and even gave her the broken down sewing machine I lugged up the stoop and into the living room.
I gave her my love for that borough as well as my interest in my Irish ancestry. I gave her my bittersweet goodbye to Manhattan when I moved, complete with a farewell view of the Brooklyn Bridge.
I suppose writing about you know means you'll have an easier time of things like plotting and character development or that you'll be coming from a place of authority. I could, in some future novel, write a character who works in magazine design, as I've got plenty of background in that, but I'm not sure how much I'd truly enjoy it.
World Building
Writing about what you know is generally meant to refer to your own lived experience.
Something I adore but for obvious reasons don't have lived experience with is Regency Era England. If writing about what I knew as regarded early 19th century life in London, it would be entirely based on Jane Austen movies.
My local library was an amazing resource as were legions of romance writers sharing their discoveries on their blogs and I've learned so much as I built the world for my series, the Shapeshifters of the Beau Monde, a Regency/Shapeshifter mashup.
Nope, I wouldn't have much experience with humans who have the ability to turn into animals, either. But I had a blast combining the two genres and — well, I won't say it made the writing easy (writing isn't ever easy, but that's an essay for another day), but it made it fun.
Honestly: Do What You Like
The moral of this story: don't take writing directives too much to heart. What works for one writer may not work for another. If research is your jam, then expand your knowledge base until your subject is what you know. If you love writing contemporary topics that take bits and pieces from your -day-to-day, do it! There are so many challenges an author faces, that any day writing is fun is a very good day.
Susanna Allen
Genre: Paranormal contemporary romance
Publisher: Ally Press
Date of Publication: October 01, 2021
ISBN Print: 978-1-953290-12-0
ISBN eBook: 978-1-953290-13-7
ASIN: B09G97RGZF
Number of pages: 326 pages
Word Count: 82,000
Cover Artist: Tamara DeStefano
Tagline: A heartbroken amateur witch is in over her head after casting a spell that actually works—will the handsome Irish artist she fancies come to her rescue?
Book Description:
What was the point of being a witch if Annabelle Walsh couldn’t manage a spell to fix her broken heart? As a dedicated dabbler in all things esoteric, she figured she could speed up her healing process when she’s dumped out of the blue by her boyfriend... but nothing’s working.
An idle wander into an unfamiliar new age shop adds the bit of magic in her life that she’d been looking for: an interfering, mischievous Pooka called Callie who’s determined to turn Annabelle’s life around— mostly by turning it upside down.
Suddenly, Annabelle’s too busy to brood, and her writing career begins to take off; in fact, it’s during a brainstorming session for an off-off-off-off Broadway theatre production that she meets tall, dark, and handsome Jamie Flynn, an Irishman in New York who seems to be keen at first sight, if not in love quite yet. As Annabelle gets her life back on track, she starts to see the difference between a real life, a real career, and a real man… and all it took was a little magic mischief.
Excerpt:
Annabelle lit candles and sat down on the floor. She tried deep
breathing for a few seconds, and feeling slightly calmer, took her tarot deck
out of its wooden box and shuffled the cards. She let her breath flow in and
out; it lulled her, cleared her head, calmed her down, and the smell of the
burning wax soothed her, as she tried to formulate a mature, non-attached-type
question. Not: Will Wilson come back to me, please, please?
Her breathing hitched. Yeah, definitely not that. “Okay. The issue is…
Wilson. Um. Do we have a future together?”
She turned over a card. The Knight of Pentacles, reversed.
“Damn it.” Reversed, this Knight meant carelessness, a standstill in
affairs. “Okay, so if things are at a standstill, that means they can move
forward again, right?” She turned another card.
Three of Swords. Sorrow due to loss. Well, duh, Annabelle thought, and
then winced, as if she’d said it out loud. As if the cards could hear.
She turned over the next card. The Wheel of Fortune. Not always a good
sign, though, as it could mean an unexpected loss rather than a gain, even when
in the upright position as it was now. “I don’t know what any of this means,”
Annabelle mumbled, knowing full well what it meant. This was all about the now,
and she didn’t like the now.
At moments like these, Annabelle found it was usually a good thing to
stop pulling cards.
Queen of Cups. She shivered. That was her court card. Good natured,
intuitive, a loving female figure, one whose imagination often outweighed her
good sense.
Strength. The beautiful woman grasped the lion by the jaws, symbolizing
the power of the human spirit to overcome any obstacle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Sun. “Summertime? Two months from now? I’ll be better in two
months?”
Annabelle gathered up the reading and returned the deck to its box.
She continued to sit. She tried to go back to the deep breathing but
got bored. She thought about how she’d never had much luck reading Wilson’s cards.
Maybe it never worked because it was almost always post-coital, the only time
he was ever mellow enough to entertain the idea. She could never make sense of
his configurations, none of the images seemed to relate to the others, she’d
pull card after card and make a spread that was meaningless, confused. He would
lose interest and patience. She would feel as though she’d failed. Ugh.
She’d like to blame it all on him, but she supposed her own muddled
thinking got in the way as well; always hoping he was asking about the future
of their relationship, whether she would marry him, whether she would like an
emerald-cut diamond in a platinum setting, as opposed to a three carat
marquis-cut in white gold.
Someday, maybe, she’d find that remotely amusing.
But not today. Rising, she left the candles burning and got some
incense going as well.
Lavender: soothing, healing. She wanted healing. She
wanted that fistful of pain out of her chest. She wanted all her lessons
learned in a six-week correspondence course, she wanted a whole, strong heart,
she wanted Wilson back, she wanted all the sadness to leak out of her pores,
she wanted her life back. Herself back. Now.
Susanna is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communication Design and counts The Village Voice, New York Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly as past design experiences. Born in New Jersey, she moved to Ireland for twelve months—in 1998. She is the author of the Shapeshifters of the Beau Monde series, published by Sourcebooks: A Wolf in Duke’s Clothing, an Amazon Editor’s Best Book of the Month, is available now; A Most Unusual Duke debuts in December 2021.
Writing as Susan Conley, she is the author of Drama Queen and The Fidelity Project, both published by Headline UK; Many Brave Fools: A Story of Addiction, Dysfunction, Codependency…and Horses is available from Trafalgar Square Books. Susanna is living her life by the three Rs—reading, writing, and horseback riding—and can generally be found on her sofa with her e-reader, gazing out a window and thinking about made-up people, or cantering around in circles. She loves every minute of it.
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