My guest today is Marva Dasef, whose Witches of Galdorheim middle-grade novel series just got its third installment, Scotch Broom. Marva talks about the realization that she had a series on her hands.
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How a Title Became a Series
Sometime in 2008, I woke up with two words in my head: bad
and spelling. I must have had some subconscious blip that produced the thought,
but I’ve no idea what it might be.
As I sipped my first cup of coffee, I opened a text document
and entered BAD SPELLING at the top. Then I stared at it and a few thoughts
came to mind (okay, that might not have happened until my second cup of
coffee). I wondered why my subconscious was talking about poor spelling since
I’ve always been a very good speller. Obviously, it didn’t have anything to do
with anything so mundane as a spelling bee at school, although I won’t discount
the possibility. If you’ve ever experienced a “school” dream where you’re
wandering around not knowing where your next class was being held, or where the
heck they put your locker, or somewhat embarrassed to find you’re only have
your underwear on, then you know the horrors of the “school” dream. Many people
have them, nothing to be ashamed of.
Despite the origin lost in the dreamworld, my next coherent
thought was that “spelling” had to do with spellcasting. Okay, I write books
for middle-grade kids and they love fantasy, so a witch or wizard must be
involved. Why would a witch (and the main character turns out to be a teen
witch) be really bad at spellcasting (or simply put, spelling)? And if she was
a lousy speller, why would it bother her? Well, because she’s surrounded by
other witches having no problems spelling at all. What’s worse is she has a
little brother who’s a super speller, and cute besides. That’s enough to put a
twist in a witch’s ego.
Katrina turned out to be the witch, and her annoying little
brother became Rune. Note that Rune has a cool, wizardly name while Katrina is
stuck with a name that sounded like a Russian doll. Blech! I did that on
purpose because Kat (as she prefers) is disturbingly mundane for a witch.
Further coffee and thinking led me to believe that the
witches of the world might like a place where they could let it all hang out,
be witches without worry what the mundane neighbors might think. It occurred to
me that witches were persecuted in the Middle Ages, and it only made sense for
them to get the heck out of Dodge and go somewhere of their own. This somewhere
is about as remote a place one could find, being a glacier-covered island in
the middle of the Arctic. Galdorheim Island became my setting.
Eventually, I worked out why Kat is a lousy speller, and
what she had to do to solve her problem. At first, she simply wants to run away
from home to find her deceased father’s family, who happen to be a tribe of
fisher/hunters in Siberia—the Samis (closely related to the Lapps of Norway or
the Inuits of Alaska). Kat’s journey to find her father’s family puts her
through a lot of danger and an interesting journey meeting all sorts of magical
types along the way. Kat eventually solves her magic problem and gets Sami
boyfriend as well.
I did the query thing for awhile, but threw up my hands in
despair when one agent’s response at a writers’ conference is that Katrina was
a bad choice for the MC’s name while the brother had a cool, warlocky name.
Did. Not. Get. It. Along with a few requests for partials and fulls, but no
bites, I figured that I was fighting a fruitless battle. After all, I’m a retired
person, meaning I have a limited number of years to make good. I could croak
tomorrow, and my great story would be DOA on my hard drive.
Long story short, I changed tactics and queried small
publishers directly. Still nothing, so I decided I may as well write another
book with the same characters. How’s that for completely illogical thinking?
Nobody wanted the first book, so why would I think a second book would have a
better chance?
Because I had a title. From the mysterious aether of my
subconscious, the words “midnight” and “oil” came to mind. Oooh, my favorite!
Another pun.
Midnight Oil followed Kat’s and Rune’s adventures in a new
book. Let me tell you there was a whole lot of interesting research that led me
from the bare bones idea of Midnight Oil, to the ensuring dire circumstances
which included the Loch Ness monster, a forest elemental spirit, and a magical
ultralight.
Since things come in threes, I was now obligated to write a
third book. Three is a mystical number which is the minimum required to make a
series. I could write another book for a quadrology or not as I choose.
Now I was under the gun. I decided Kat needed to have a
vacation and came up with the Witches’ Winter Abroad idea. This gave me the
freedom to pick another area of the world (although not too far from the
Arctic) and delve into a new mythology. Scotland became the site of Kat’s next
adventure. Everybody and their Irish Wolfhound does Irish Celtic myth, so I
stopped short and led Kat into the Highlands for a slightly different Celtic
flavor. Research revealed a lot of mythology that did not include the usual
suspects. I went to the deep base of mythology. The old mythical pantheon had a
lot of material that wasn’t already stomped all over by every author who wanted
a character named Siobhan (which I still have no idea how to pronounce). I did
find Cailleach, the winter foil to Bride, the goddess of Spring. Old Cailleach
could very well have fallen on hard times, has hidden herself away in the
Otherworld (which just so happens to be on an alternate plane of existence as
the Scottish Highlands).
When I shoved Kat into Cailleach’s Otherworld, I figured she
had to be lost, otherwise, she’d just step out of the Otherworld and continue
her trip abroad. From this simple base, I provided Kat with a few companions to
meet along the way: Sianach, a giant meat-eating stag, Cusith, a giant (notice
a theme here?) green dog with a braided tail (don’t blame me, blame the
Scottish whiskey for this one), and Cait Sidhe, the giant (well, not too giant)
black cat fairy. Where does Kat want to go? To see the Trow King, of course.
Now, I’ve got Wizard of Oz written all over this story. Subtle, eh?
This book didn’t have a title at first like the others, but
I soon came up with Scotch Broom, and you can read the book to find out why.
There they are, then. A series of books that all came from a
title. All I had to do is add words.
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The Witches of Galdorheim books are available at MuseItUp, on Kindle, and elsewhere.
And now, without further ado, I'm honored to present Devan Sipher, author of the novel The Wedding Beat, released in April by Penguin. He reminds us what important work it is to write a book. Enjoy!
