An Interview with author Maggie Secara

     Photographer:  Andrew Schmidt
 Welcome to Meet The Author! Today Maggie Secara has stopped by to give us a little insight into her life and her books.  So let's get started. Please tell us a little about yourself. Let’s see. I have a Master’s degree in English and, before you roll your eyes, I actually make a living at putting words in a row. Not fiction, no, alas—but I am a technical writer, which is almost as good. Currently, I’m working on contract for the Los Angeles Police Department. I live in N. Hollywood, CA with my very supportive husband, the amazing  JimDear, and our cats: a champagne and buff tabby called Mister, and Coco, a very fluffy torty. Everything else, as they say, is subject to change without notice. When did you start writing? I wrote a little poem when I was about 8, which I can still recite. It began: Spring is in the flowers, Spring is in the air...” And they haven’t been able to shut me up since.  What projects have been published? The Dragon Ring, my first fantasy novel, came out in March as an e-book from Crooked Cat Publishing.  It’s Book 1 of the Harper Errant series, and concerns Ben Harper, an American reality show host who finds himself on a mission for the king of Faerie. The paperback will be available August 31, and I'm very excited about that. I recently turned in the manuscript for Book 2, King’s Raven. We'll be starting the editorial round shortly, then they can schedule the release. Since small publishers have much shorter lead times than the big guys, it shouldn't be too long a wait. 

I've self-published two projects: Molly September, a romantic adventure novel set in Port Royal and the Spanish Main (2011) and A Compendium of Common Knowledge 1564-1603, a little handbook of Elizabethan daily life for writers, actors, and re-enactors (2008). I've also written poetry now and then, and have been fortunate enough to have a few poems published here and there in little magazines.

  Illustrator: Larissa Neto  Tell us about The Dragon Ring: The Harper Errant series is essentially a blend of urban and mythic fantasy with time travel. In other words, while my hero, Ben Harper, starts out in the modern world, he can find himself pursuing an artifact, a lost friend, or a killer through time, usually on behalf of the king of Faerie. Music is the foundation of Faerie magic, you know, and the stories are wrapped in music, magic, and adventure.  At the center of The Dragon Ring is a broken Viking arm ring with dragon-headed finials whose pieces have been flung into various points in the past.  Ben has to locate the pieces so that Oberon can magically restore the ring to its proper form and return it to the court of Alfred the Great, in time to make a treaty with a Viking warlord - a pivot point in history on which the world depends.  The action takes him to Viking Age Wessex, of course, as well as Elizabethan London and 18th century Devon.  


Illustrators:  Scott Perkins and Ari Berk
 What was your inspiration?  This is actually kind of a funny story, but only if you know my friend Ari, who’s a college professor. He’s a brilliant scholar and folklorist, and a gifted writer with a devastating wit—and I’ve known him since he was a teenager. Well, I’d been wanting to tackle a mystery for some time, and was racking my brain for a starting point, when late one night in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere, a question popped into my head: “What if Ari had to solve a mystery?” That tickled me so much I knew it was the start of a great idea. For one thing, if he was in it, Faerie had to be involved. There had to be a puzzle worthy of his talents. And there had to be something precious at stake to be worthy of his time. I stayed up all night scribbling on anything I could find, asking “what if...” and “what about...” until something like a plot started to gel. In the end, the story is more of a quest than a mystery, and Ben isn’t very much like Ari except in his eclectic interests, his Renaissance Faire experience, and his intimate acquaintance with Faerie. And oh yes, Ari’s son Robin became the model for Ben’s son Sparrow—the precious thing that’s at stake.  That’s the reason The Dragon Ringis dedicated to Robin and his parents. One day, I really have to write a mystery for them. How did you select the title of your novel? The original title was Sparrow’s Dragon, a play on Ben’s son’s name. It seemed to make sense because he is the object of various villainous threats. The trouble is, he’s not really a main character. And with that title and my original opening, too many people thought of it as a YA book! Not that older teens wouldn't enjoy it, but that wasn't the intention. Clearly, I needed a new title.  Since the dragon arm ring is the object of Ben’s quest, The Dragon Ring turned out to be the perfect answer.   What are you currently working on? Well, I just finished creating a good, clean submission draft of King’s Raven. It wasn’t bad at the beginning of the year, but getting Dragon Ring out kind of interrupted the polishing for a while. I still had 8 pages of notes to fix this or fill in that, smooth this transition, check another source. So I’m taking some time to just read and watch movies for a few weeks, and do some final research for Book 3, The Mermaid Stair. It’s still more or less a first draft, so as you can probably imagine, the file of notes for that is even longer! I also have The Curse of the Crystal Palace, a half-finished Victorian paranormal, still waiting for me to get back to it—it’s outside the Harper Errant sequence, but uses some of the characters from King’s Raven. And then there’s the Elizabethan mystery. I’m definitely going to be busy for a while! What are you reading at the moment? Some of my reviewers have said things like “if you like Charles de Lint, you’ll love this book,” so I thought I’d better see what they were talking about. As it turns out, it is a terrific compliment, and I can see the connection. I’d never read much of his work before, and it’s complex, resonant, mythic in a unique and idiosyncratic way. He takes the elements of Faerie and North American shamanistic tradition and blends them into a contemporary setting in a way that manages to be both mystical and naturalistic at the same time! I can only hope I’m really that good, but what lovely company to be in. I’ve also just discovered S.P. Hendrick’s Glastonbury Chronicles: Horned King, dying and rising god, sacrifice to replenish the land, multiple reincarnations, and love all believably told and beautifully written. My other favorites at the moment are Marie Brennan and Connie Willis. And finally, can you tell us some fun facts about yourself, such as crossed skydiving off my bucket list. I once worked as an office assistant for Harlan Ellison (Deathbird Stories, Dangerous Visions, Strange Wine, etc.). One of the strangest, most bizarre years of my life, but definitely a learning experience.  I spent at least 20 years working the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in California; I’ve been both a countess and a camp follower, and made all my own costumes. Most of my friends (including my husband) are Faire people, even now. And oh yes, there’s a website and a book that came out of the experience (The Compendium I mentioned earlier)! In my extreme youth I saw the Beatles in concert each of the three years they played in Los Angeles. I screamed and screamed! Where can we find out more about you? Find out more about me and all my books, with background material (including video links for most of Ben’s music) at http://maggie-secara.com. Where can we purchase your books? For a complete set of e-book options, see my page on the Crooked Cat site. http://crookedcatpublishing.com/our-books/the-dragon-ring-by-maggie-secara. The paperback will be available on August 31.