Strange Magic
To paraphrase The Rocky Horror Picture Show, allow me to take you on a strange journey...
It was some time late in 2006, and all was not really well with me. I'd just been dumped hardcore by my Evil Ex, I was trying to adjust to a new job with a ton of responsibility, and I'd finished Pure Blood, the second Nocturne City book. Considering my next deadline wasn't for 18 months and I didn't have the burning desire to write more werewolves at the moment, I was at loose ends.
I was noodling with the idea of repurposing an old story I'd half-assedly worked on with a friend of mine about exorcists and demons into a novel, but I had no real shape or scope of story and no characters to work with.
Until one day a character leaned over my shoulder and said into my ear, very clearly and quietly:
"Michaelmas daisies bloomed around Pete Caldecotts feet the day she met Jack Winter, just as they had twelve years ago on the day he died."
At the time, I didn't know it was Jack talking, but after the holidays, in January of 2007, I made the decision to continue from that first line, and that's when Jack made himself known. And talked, and talked, and wouldn't leave me alone to the point of sleeplessness.
The book wasn't easy to write--I ended up with an awful, disjointed, awkwardly written first draft that was only about 68,000 words long--not nearlylong enough to do service to the world that Jack had brought with him. I routinely considered scrapping the entire thing and starting something easier. I recalled the Neil Gaiman quote about waiting to write stories for years (sometimes decades) until he was good enough to do them justice with painful regularity.
Then I let the draft sit, and after some months of staring at it in fear and loathing, I realized I missed Jack and Pete. I missed hearing their stories, and I missed the sensation of working with living, breathing characters that spilled their words onto the page so quickly that I sometimes couldn't keep up.
So I opened up a new version of the doc, and I started slashing.
It was a painful rewrite, and I was convinced with every step I was making things worse. But I got the MS up to a respectable 84,000 words and I sent it to my lovely agent, who promptly sent me back a laundry list of problems. Jack was unsympathetic. Large swaths of the plot made no sense. The ending was confusing to the point of obfuscation. It was a bit like being a virgin author all over again, with a first manuscript I had no clue how to edit because the story was so big, and layered, and strange compared to anything else I'd written.
Around then (it was September 2007 at this point), I went to London for the first time. And in the city where the story was set, something clicked. I spent the majority of my vacation in a pub, working on rewrites and for the first time the story felt whole, alive and like a Real Book.
We sold Street Magic and its sequel, Demon Bound in January of 2008. Two and a half years after Jack first stopped by to tell me his story, Street Magic is a real book. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it's my favorite story I've told so far.
I couldn't be happier.
---
And here are some new reviews of the book:
Genrereviews.
Reviews by Brooke.
PS. Don't forget to Ask Jack for a chance to win a copy of Street Magic and an ARC of Witch Craft.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.
It was some time late in 2006, and all was not really well with me. I'd just been dumped hardcore by my Evil Ex, I was trying to adjust to a new job with a ton of responsibility, and I'd finished Pure Blood, the second Nocturne City book. Considering my next deadline wasn't for 18 months and I didn't have the burning desire to write more werewolves at the moment, I was at loose ends.
I was noodling with the idea of repurposing an old story I'd half-assedly worked on with a friend of mine about exorcists and demons into a novel, but I had no real shape or scope of story and no characters to work with.
Until one day a character leaned over my shoulder and said into my ear, very clearly and quietly:
"Michaelmas daisies bloomed around Pete Caldecotts feet the day she met Jack Winter, just as they had twelve years ago on the day he died."
At the time, I didn't know it was Jack talking, but after the holidays, in January of 2007, I made the decision to continue from that first line, and that's when Jack made himself known. And talked, and talked, and wouldn't leave me alone to the point of sleeplessness.
The book wasn't easy to write--I ended up with an awful, disjointed, awkwardly written first draft that was only about 68,000 words long--not nearlylong enough to do service to the world that Jack had brought with him. I routinely considered scrapping the entire thing and starting something easier. I recalled the Neil Gaiman quote about waiting to write stories for years (sometimes decades) until he was good enough to do them justice with painful regularity.
Then I let the draft sit, and after some months of staring at it in fear and loathing, I realized I missed Jack and Pete. I missed hearing their stories, and I missed the sensation of working with living, breathing characters that spilled their words onto the page so quickly that I sometimes couldn't keep up.
So I opened up a new version of the doc, and I started slashing.
It was a painful rewrite, and I was convinced with every step I was making things worse. But I got the MS up to a respectable 84,000 words and I sent it to my lovely agent, who promptly sent me back a laundry list of problems. Jack was unsympathetic. Large swaths of the plot made no sense. The ending was confusing to the point of obfuscation. It was a bit like being a virgin author all over again, with a first manuscript I had no clue how to edit because the story was so big, and layered, and strange compared to anything else I'd written.
Around then (it was September 2007 at this point), I went to London for the first time. And in the city where the story was set, something clicked. I spent the majority of my vacation in a pub, working on rewrites and for the first time the story felt whole, alive and like a Real Book.
We sold Street Magic and its sequel, Demon Bound in January of 2008. Two and a half years after Jack first stopped by to tell me his story, Street Magic is a real book. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it's my favorite story I've told so far.
I couldn't be happier.
---
And here are some new reviews of the book:
Genrereviews.
Reviews by Brooke.
PS. Don't forget to Ask Jack for a chance to win a copy of Street Magic and an ARC of Witch Craft.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.