I Was Today Years Old When I Got to Make This Nerdy Little Girl's Dreams Come True

Hello magical friends!

The Big Announcement

I'm so thrilled to announce that I have signed a five-book deal with Storm Publishing that includes the three current books in the Natural Magic series, as well as two more that will be published in the coming year.

What this means for readers: There will be more books set in Primrose Court! The series will also be getting a glow-up with new covers and art this spring. Soundbooth Theater will continue to produce the audio versions (more on the next releases coming soon), and I can't wait to dive back into this cozy, whimsical world of mine.

Somehow I knew I wasn't done...

Why This Is a Dream Come True

See the little girl in that photo? Yes, that girl is me. And even at age 9 or so (I think that's how old I was here), I was certain that I would be an author someday. It was my fondest dream.

I was always a voracious reader—my parents could hardly keep up with the demand and would buy me brown bags full of vintage books to tide me over between Scholastic book fairs. That's how I discovered the 15-book series by Inez Haynes Irwin about a little girl named Maida and her friends Rosie and Arthur. The books were written over a 45-year period, starting in 1905, and set in a fictional neighborhood in Boston known as Primrose Court. There are many adventures in the series, with Maida and her ragtag group of friends opening a shop, camping on an island, and sailing off on a runaway houseboat.

I borrowed some of the same names from the original series as well as the name for the community, which in my series is a secret magical enclave. But from there, the stories part company. My books are written for adults, and you won't find witches and shifters in Irwin's stories, though there are a fair number of faerie rings and a certain whimsicality that roped me in as a child.

I hope the main similarity between these books that inspired me and my own is the cozy feeling they engender. It was always my goal to write a series that felt like a special gift for readers, a world to escape into that was like a delightful treat delivered with a warm hug. 

I wanted them to feel like I felt as a child whenever I discovered a new, unread Maida book with its sunny orange cover. Like I'd struck gold!

The Magic Closet

What I didn't expect was that I would have as much fun writing and playing in the world of my imagination as I had when I was a child.

I can still picture myself, around the time of this photo, building a fort on the top shelf of my tiny overstuffed closet in my yellow flowery-wallpapered bedroom in New Jersey. I had convinced myself the closet was a magic portal to another world, a safe place where I could travel to another time, place, dimension. And so it was, because it was there on the top shelf that I penned my first book, which I have to this day.

Note: It's terrible, with lots of bad rhymes, but it was heartfelt. Also note, I had to stop writing in the closet when the lamp I dragged in there nearly burned the house down.

These days I get to write with a gorgeous view of the ocean, and I am constantly pinching myself. I have been so fortunate as an indie writer to have made the bestseller list on Amazon multiple times, and now, with the partnership with Storm, I feel even luckier. Not because I finally have a "trad" deal, but because I really feel that Storm is the best partner for this series, and I know they're going to take it even farther—to places I have yet to imagine.

Also... I get to write two more books, and my overactive imagination is already running wild with ideas for them.

You can read the whole announcement here: Storm Publishing Announcement

Much better than the closet...