Lisa’s Comments (group member since Jun 10, 2012)

Lisa’s comments from the Q&A with Lisa Mason group.

The recent SFWA Fantasy Storybundle is how you got TGOA? Just curious.

I'm so glad you're enjoying the book! Yes, the deaths of my father when I was quite young and my mother's death years later were some of the most profound events in my life. And I, too, moved from the Midwest to California--what a change!

I always put heartfelt personal ideas in my writing. It doesn't work for me if I don't! I took about two + years to write TGOA. I'm not a book-of-the-month writer :-D

Please keep in touch, Francesca! And thank you again for your readership.

Lisa

Francesca wrote: "I'm reading The Garden of Abracadabra, and while I didn't lose my parents so young as Abby, I did lose them and that led me to finding out a lot about myself (as Abby is apparently doing). I've don..."

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss, Francesca. And thank you for your readership and your comment. Please let me know if you have any other reactions to the TGOA!

The Garden of Allah in Hollywood fell into disrepair and was leveled in the 1960s. A strip mall and parking lot were built over the grave of the beautiful Mediterranean apartment complex with so much history.

Joni Mitchell’s delightful ditty, Big Yellow Taxi, is about the demise of the Garden of Allah. The song goes,

Don’t it always seem to go;
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
They paved Paradise,
Put up a parking lot.

I never knew that, did you? I read it recently in The Hollywood Reporter.

The Garden of Abracadabra was built in Berkeley in 1850 during the California Gold Rush. This beautiful Mediterranean building won’t be demolished any time soon!

As you would expect with a crowd of professional exhibitionists living in close quarters, the Hollywood denizens at the Garden of Allah were infamous for their shenanigans. Several romantic-farce scenes from Marx brothers’ movies are based on incidents that took place there--people hiding in strange closets or charging through doors into someone’s bedroom and out the other door. There’s a slapstick scene like that in “A Day At the Races” or “Horse Feathers.”

So too pandemonium may reign at the Garden of Abracadabra, “the biggest, coolest party place in Berkeley.” Imagine the parties supernatural entities throw!

This was a lovely Mediterranean apartment complex in the Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s, complete with palm trees, bungalows, and a central pool. Sheilah Graham wrote a memoir of the same title about the place, which was inhabited by a crowd of famous actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and Greta Garbo, usually before they attained their fame, and the New Yorker crowd of writers such as the foul-mouthed Dorothy Parker, John O’Hara, and Robert Benchley, who trekked to Hollywood in search of more income writing screenplays. Screenplays back then didn’t earn the enormous fees they do now. Still, the money was often better than publishing magazine stories or even books.

I loved the idea of my apartment building inhabited not by actors and writers, but by all sorts of supernatural people and entities!

The First Fundamental of Real Magic that Abby Teller learns at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts is “Knowledge is Power.” And the First Fundamental of that principle is “Know Thyself.” The great philosopher and teacher Pythagoras coined that adage 2500 years ago, but it still rings true today, especially in this age of media up to your eyeballs.

“Know Thyself.” Think for yourself. Investigate and research issues, then exercise your own judgment and will independently of the crowd, independently of what the media tells you to think. Only then may you practice Real Magic in the real world.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Yet how many people allow themselves to be whipsawed around by family, friends, coworkers, and the media?

Abby Teller needs to learn Real Magic to defend herself against the Horde, gangster-sorcerers who murdered her father when she was a child of eight. It turns out she needs to learn Real Magic to deal with all sorts of supernatural people and entities at the Garden of Abracadabra. She applies to and is accepted by the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts.

At college in Volume 1, she learns the First and Second Fundamental of Real Magic. As research I consulted several volumes in our own extensive private library, including Real Magic by R.E.I. Bonewits, Natural Magic by David Carroll, Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall, The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians by Magus Incognito, and The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies & Magic by Migene Gonzalez-Wippler among many others.

So I had my superintendent of the mysterious, magical building in Berkeley and Abby Teller’s task of dealing with her tenants who are all some stripe of supernatural being and every apartment that is a portal to a fantasy world.

Sounded promising.

But I didn’t think an apartment super had enough tension and plot. The story could have turned out like some old TV situation comedy, “One Day at a Time,” with witches. I wanted more action and depth.

Also, I don’t want to launch a whole series with a slacker character. Abby Teller would need an excellent reason for taking a rather mundane job like that.

Well, of course! She needs a part-time job to support herself while she’s going back to college to learn Real Magic. And she must learn to master her power to save her life.

Like every author on the verge of a special, big new project, I well remember that transcendent moment of first inspiration for THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA.

Often that inspiration springs from something quotidian. You’re in the shower. Or shopping for groceries. Or, in this instance, searching for a parking space in Berkeley.
Berkeley is a small leafy university town across the Bay from San Francisco, the historic home of the original University of California campus. The town is so crowded now, searching for a parking place on the street is something of a quixotic quest.

As Tom and I cruised through unfamiliar neighborhoods of vintage brown-shingled Craftsman houses surrounded by old oaks and elms, looking for that elusive parking space, we passed a spectacular 1920s Mediterranean apartment building. We were both instantly struck by its opulence and beauty. But more than that, the place had a powerful vibe. It was spooky!

The idea sprang instantly to mind--what if you hired on as the superintendent of a building like that only to discover every one of yours tenants was some stripe of supernatural being—witches, shapeshifters, vampires, wizards--and every apartment was a portal to a fantasy world? To a fairyland or a hell?

That rich blend of fantasy tropes (magic and magicians, witches, wizards, vampires, shapeshifters, demons) in a contemporary setting, often a city but not necessarily, and mystery tropes (detective work, murder and crime, police procedural), spiced up with dicey romance, troublesome relationship issues, and wit and whimsy
.
Books I adored as a child have shaped my love of Urban Fantasy. Supernatural people in a real-world contemporary setting and wise articulate animals appear in all four volumes of P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (such beautiful and humorous writing, a true sense of wonder, and wonderful pen-and-ink illustrations). Same for Myths and Enchantment Tales adapted by Margaret Evans Price and illustrated by Evelyn Urbanowich (illustrated Greek and Roman myths). Then there was the Giant Golden Book of Dogs, Cats, and Horses (61 short illustrated stories, a Newberry Award winner). Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books (my vintage edition has dazzling pastel illustrations). Who could have missed Charlotte’s Web, mixing up humans and talking animals? I took these all books (lovingly wrapped in plastic) off with me to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lugged them all the way to California where they sit on my bookshelf to this day.

“Abracadabra” is a real magical spell formulated by Cabbalist magicians two thousand years ago. Originally invoked to cure mortal diseases, the spell has since been employed as the enabling word to cause the result of a magical operation. The spell can only be used to create good results, never evil (see E.A. Wallis Budge, Lewis Spence, and others) and is so powerful everyone in the world has heard of the word.

The Garden of Abracadabra, Book 3: The Right Road

The Garden of Abracadabra is now available as a trilogy so you can read in affordable installments.

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious magical apartment building on campus. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing battle between Good and Evil, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

In Book 3: The Right Road, Abby uncovers ancient supernatural secrets behind the murders and faces dangers and challenges ahead.

I’ve also written SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) and THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book) and four other science fiction books, as well as two dozen short stories.

“So refreshing. . . .Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

On Kindle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QLEIRU
On Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-g...

Your questions and comments are welcome here!

New! Bast Books is now offering THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA as a trilogy so you can read in installments at an affordable price.

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious magical apartment building on campus. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing battle between Good and Evil, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

In Book 2, In Dark Woods, Abby is drawn into a dangerous murder investigation and torn between three men: Daniel Stern, her ex-fiance, Jack Kovac, the enigmatic FBI agent, and Prince Lastor, the potent supernatural man living in the penthouse at the Garden of Abracadabra.

From the author of SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) and THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book).

“So refreshing. . . .Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

On Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QLEMKS
On Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-g...

Your questions and comments are welcome!

This is my first urban fantasy so I welcome your questions and comments.

The Garden of Abracadabra, Book 1: Life’s Journey

The Garden of Abracadabra is now available as a trilogy so you can read in affordable installments.

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious magical apartment building on campus. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing battle between Good and Evil, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

In Book I, Life’s Journey, Abby arrives in Berkeley, filled with hope and promise, hoping to land a new job and start magic college, when she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene.

I’ve also written SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) and THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book) and four other science fiction books, as well as two dozen short stories.

“So refreshing. . . .Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

On Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QLEK0K
On Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-g...

Your questions and comments are welcome here!

Hi, all!
I've been working hard on a new book project and haven't visited the wonderful Goodreads site for a while.

If you love urban fantasy or simply an entertaining book, please check out The Garden of Abracadabra. It's an ebook on Nook and Kindle now, and we hope to have a print edition in 2013. But only if you're interested!

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious magical apartment building on campus. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing battle between Good and Evil, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

I also wrote SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) and THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book).

“So refreshing. . . .Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Feel free to ask me any questions or make constructive comments on this discussion. Hope to hear from you!

Some people in "the business" are saying urban fantasy is a "hard sell." But what do you, the readers, think?