I found myself going down a mental rabbit trail last night as I thought about how all my books seem to represent the phase of life I’m in at that time and things that are going on with me.

When I came up with the idea for the Enchanted, Inc. series, I was working for a major international public relations agency, doing PR for big corporations. I worked with a lot of Mimis and Gregors, both in the organization I was in and in client organizations. The first spark of the idea came when I was getting ready to log in to my e-mail and I found myself wishing that there would be a job offer in it. At the same time, my writing career was struggling. I’d had quick initial success but had gone a long time without being able to sell a book, in spite of a lot of trying. My main problem turned out to be that I was writing the wrong thing, something I didn’t actually enjoy. I hadn’t discovered my secret magical strength, I guess, and I was in the wrong place. Meanwhile, I was still trying to date and going on a lot of blind dates and setups. I had hopes of finding Mr. Right and having a family.

So I wrote a series about a young woman who thinks her life is on the brink of failure, but it turns out she’s just in the wrong place because she has skills she doesn’t even know she has. Once she finds what she can really do and contribute, she finds where she belongs, and everything falls into place for her.

The Fairy Tale series was a weird one because it involved a character who came to me in a dream decades earlier being slotted into an image that I dreamed, and then a story built around it based on all those editors who said they wanted something like Enchanted, Inc. but they didn’t want to continue that series. I started working on it not long after I learned that the series was being dropped by the publisher. I think at the time I was dealing with a lot of doubts about my potential and whether I was holding myself back. That came out in Sophie’s background of her having been so talented but then she felt like she had to give it all up. She was stuck until she was forced to take action and face everything. The time I was writing it was a difficult one for me, and that probably came through in the story.

I don’t think Rebel Mechanics came from anything in particular in my life. It’s probably my most political series, as it came from seeing what was going on in the world. It feels like we’re in a second Gilded Age, when so much of the wealth is concentrated in a few people who are living obscenely opulent lives while resisting paying taxes or paying their employees, and they have so much power over everyone else. That translated into wondering how it would work if they had literal magical power. I think the analogy is more apt now than ever, but I’m not sure I’m up for dealing with that world right now. It would be an unsettling place to dwell in for me. At some point, it might become cathartic to write about toppling everything, but to get there you have to be in the bad part of it.

The mysteries definitely reflect where I was when I was writing them. I started writing the first book at around the same time I started thinking about moving somewhere else. I didn’t have a target at the time, but I knew I wanted to get away from a major metropolitan area. So, I created a small town for my heroine to go to. The eerie thing is that the town I created is so much like the town I ended up moving to, and I’d written at least three of those books before I even heard about this town. My current town is much bigger than the one in the books and a lot hillier, and it’s laid out differently, but there’s a lot in common. We have the preserved Victorian main street with shops and restaurants on the ground floor and apartments and offices above. There’s even an old movie theater next door to a Mexican restaurant (but it’s a first-run theater instead of just showing classics). There’s a co-working hub like the one in the books (and now I don’t remember how much of that ended up in the books. I wrote whole scenes involving it that I think got cut). There’s a park with a bandstand gazebo where they hold concerts and where they did the July 4 festivities. Our rail station is active for passenger rail, both Amtrak and sightseeing excursions, unlike the one in the books. The downtown area is surrounded by historic homes, though ours are a bit older than you’d find in most Texas towns. The house I’m buying that was built in 1900 isn’t considered “historic” here (which is nice because it means I don’t have to abide by historical society rules in what I do with it). There’s even a wealthy man (an architect rather than a tech billionaire) who’s been behind a lot of the preservation of the town and restoring and repurposing some of the old buildings. I basically created my dream town before I actually found it in real life.

Right now, I’m finding myself drawn to secondary world fantasy, where none of it involves our world. I saw a joke on Facebook about how Mr. Rogers had it right: Come home, change into comfortable clothes, then escape to the Land of Make Believe. That’s where I am at the moment. I’m enjoying playing in this other world. The cozy fantasy subgenre is something I’ve always wanted. I love the parts of The Lord of the Rings that are just the characters hanging out in the Shire or in Rivendell. I wanted stories about just being in those places without any worry about fleeing from orcs or the Nazgul or the threat of the whole world getting sucked into darkness. I just want daily life in magical places.

I remember that when the series Westworld was first on TV, I found myself pondering what kind of high-tech, immersive amusement park I’d want to visit, and I came to the conclusion that I’d want a mild fantasy quest, basically an excuse for a journey through the world, with some purpose but without a lot of stakes. Of course, in that theme park of the world, there would be overnight stops set up to look like you’re camping in the woods, but that mossy stretch of ground would actually be a comfortable mattress, and there’d be a modern bathroom in that huge tree trunk. That’s also the kind of fictional experience I want–the low-stakes adventure in a magical world, not hidden modern conveniences.

With the Rydding Village books, it’s all about finding a place and building a community, and that’s definitely where I am now. I’ve also been working on a less-cozy romantasy that’s about leaving the familiar and going into the unknown, which is also my current state.

In other news, I got the house! Contract’s signed. The inspection is tomorrow. Now I’ll need to sell a lot of books to rebuild my savings and buy nice things for the new place.