My Fantasy Crime Novel - My Take

I've loved the mystery since I picked up my first Nancy Drew Mystery. You start with the problem, the theft, the murder, the wrongdoing, and dig away at the problem until you find the killer, the thief, the wrongdoer.

Add to that, magic. The idea to put the two together, to create the fantasy crime novel, came about after watching Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and CSI, on repeat for years, and mixing my two favorite genres.

It's been done before. I won't take credit for the combo. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher always comes up when I talk about The Wizard Hall Chronicles. I won't try to compete; I won't say it's better. But it is different.

It's the theme of hiding magic in plain sight, or all is lost. Keeping the secret from the rest of the world while living in sync with it is mandatory in my world.

I wrote the strong female character, while giving her vulnerability and real-life issues that affect the magic. It's not new. Piper Halliwell and Buffy Summers were in my head when I wrote.

I hope I took the basics in the fantasy world and created something different. I hope I created a woman we can look to for inspiration. At least understanding that all is not easily solved and life sometimes sucks. But we can work through it for that happy ending.

I hope I created a fantasy crime novel that has a new approach to the story; a bonafide police procedural that's not what we expect when we think police.

Stories are recycled all the time. As authors, we can only hope we find the right pieces to create a story that's a little different than what we've seen before.

I don't think I'll ever stop writing a mystery. I think I'll go back to the fantasy crime novel, and I'll always write the strong, yet vulnerable female character that gives readers someone to root for.

My newest character, Danny Bradford, is a sixteen-year-old high schooler from a family of journalists. She learns the lesson of speaking the truth while figuring out how that will play in her plans. While she gets too close to the bad guy, she must remember to speak the facts as she works her way out of trouble honestly and carefully until she wins.

While The Nikki Page Mysteries and Danny's World aren't fantasy crime novels, I approach them the way I approached The Wizard Hall Chronicles and Annie Pearce. Writing real women with real problems who solve the crimes the best way they know how. Kinda like my own life.

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