I hesitate to use terms like “book of my heart” because I love all of my books. They’re pieces of my soul, condensed to words and nudged out the door to hopefully entertain a few people.
But this book, friends. This book is very, very dear to me.
I love middle grade. I think many of us readers got our start in middle grade books. I knew someday I’d want to try my hand at writing one, but I never seemed to have the right plot or ideas.
UNSEEN MAGIC came about because of a scattering of events: first, does anyone else remember the regional gothic meme going around Tumblr way back in 2011? 2012? People would make bulleted lists of all the ways their hometowns were slightly eerie, slightly supernatural. As a writing exercise, I wrote my own list for Northern California. The fog-wreathed redwoods, the quiet isolation, the way roads twisted in and out of thousand-year-old trees… it seemed like a place rife with magic.
And I looked at that bulleted list and realized, This would be an amazing setting for a book. So I put it away for later.
A second event: a few years ago, I was rummaging in my jeans pockets while doing laundry. As I pulled out a few spare coins and scraps of paper, I found a packet of tea.
I had no memory of putting it there. I couldn’t recall why I had tea in my pocket.
And then part of me whispered, What if the cost of the tea was your memory?
So I tucked that thought away, too.
The third and final event was hearing a friend talk about their own struggles with anxiety. It’s a struggle I know well myself. “I have anxiety monsters,” she said, and I found myself remembering that term. Anxiety monsters. Maybe life would be easier if anxiety could be a monster, I thought. If it was something I could fight or slay.
And all of those thoughts - the supernatural, eerie town in the redwoods, the tea that costs memories, and a girl fighting her own anxiety - all came together to form UNSEEN MAGIC.
I wrote this book for anyone still looking for magic. And I can’t wait to share it with you.
Edit: And now we have a cover!!