Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

The author

It’s been a year and a half since it came out, and I still can’t believe Magic for Liars is really and truly out in the world. What started out as a book about murder and magic turned into a book about identity, sisterhood, paths not travelled, consent, and the lies we tell ourselves to justify the people we become. The journey that led to Magic for Liars being in your hands right now is one that has changed my life for the better, in so many ways. Since I sat on my bed with a notebook looking at a page with the words “novel idea” written at the top, I’ve moved three times, written four novels and two novellas, gotten divorced, fallen in love again, lost myself, found myself, and become the person I am today. In so many ways, this book is where my life began. Thank you so much for sharing it with me.

If you need to hurry, her oft-repeated saying went, you’re already too late.

In many ways – for better and for worse – Mrs. Webb’s character is informed by the voice of my own anxiety. I hate being late and I hate the feeling of needing to rush because it makes me feel like I’m late. Mrs. Webb is a stern, caring administrator who sometimes brings an unsympathetic perspective to the problems students have. I often treat myself the way she treats those students: as someone whose issues are smaller than they seem, and who needs to be guided with a somewhat unyielding hand. In the time since I wrote Magic for Liars I’ve learned to be a little gentler with myself. (…A little.)

the books murmuring to each other like a scandalized congregation of origami Presbyterians.

Sometimes when you’re writing a book, you put a line like this together – one that makes you think “oh that’s a good one.” This line – and most of this chapter – helped me establish the rococo noir-y voice I wanted this book to deliver. I wanted to combine rich metaphorical language with the raw honesty of pulp noir and the coziness of a classic magical-school narrative. In this one sentence, I genuinely feel I hit the mark. Also, it was fun as heck to write. I think metaphors and similes have some of the most powerful impact on readers (especially on me). What’s a metaphor you’ve read that really stuck with you?

Nobody decides to become the kind of person who will stab a stranger in order to get at what’s inside her pockets. That’s a choice life makes for you.

This is something I feel so strongly about. A lot of conversation around crime, especially burglary and theft, focuses on the impact and not the cause. I’ve dealt with a lot of theft in my life, and while it never feels good to have something taken from me, the vast majority of those thefts were perpetrated by people experiencing dire need. Mugging a person isn’t a fun hobby – it’s an act of desperation. Nobody involved in that kind of interaction wants to be there.

I’ve never been good at recognizing what moments are important. What things I should hang on to while I’ve got them.

A long time ago, I got into the habit of trying to recognize important moments when they’re happening. I have a truly terrible memory, and it’s hard for me to hang onto most things, but I still make a special effort to wrestle my brain into a remembering-shape when big stuff is happening. It almost never works. I’ll say to myself “remember this! This is a big deal!” and then a few months later, that memory will have been replaced by a dream I had or a cool dog I saw. That said, I will always remember the moment I first said the name “Ivy Gamble” out loud to my agent over the phone. I was standing in my bosses office (he was at lunch and I had snuck in there to secretly take the call with DongWon). I was looking out the window, watching an Oakland City Bus pull up to a bus stop. When I said her name, everything seemed to stop for a moment, and I thought to myself, “maybe I’ll get to keep this memory.” So far, I’ve been lucky enough to hang on to it. Is there a moment you’ve been able to keep? Is it an important one, or is it something you never thought you’d remember later?

We spend most of our students’ freshman year teaching them that words have power, and we don’t waste that power if we can help it.”

It’s no secret that I’m a big Tana French fan. In her most recent book, The Searcher, the protagonist spends some time reflecting on the difference between morals and manners. Manners, he figures, are correct words and polite usage, whereas morals are about how you try to impact the world around you. When I wrote this line and the lines around it, I was (can you believe it?) still identifying as female. The words that folks use to refer to female people – words like she and her – never quite sat right with me, but I didn’t pay too much attention to that feeling until I learned about the idea of being nonbinary. Words like ‘they’ and ‘them’ felt right to me in a way that ‘she’ and ‘her’ never did. When people use the wrong pronouns to refer to me, I almost always figure that it’s an accident, and to me, that’s a matter of manners rather than a matter of morals. Still, those words have power. The word ‘they’ has the power to make me and a lot of other people feel seen, understood, and cared for. That’s a kind of power I never want to waste.

I tried not to feel temporary. Just for a few seconds. But trying not to feel something isn’t the same as not feeling it, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I was alone again.

In hindsight, I’m really startled to realize how much of myself I put into this book. That feeling of being temporary was something I struggled with so often at the time I was writing, in part because I was basing so much of my identity on what other people needed from me. When someone wasn’t asking me for something or expecting something from me, I felt like I was starting to evaporate at the edges. In the time since, I’ve been lucky enough to learn who I am without anyone else defining me, and I get to feel just a little more solid. Just a little more permanent.

It was a feeling like nostalgia, but for something I’d never done. Something I’d never had.

As an author, I feel this constantly. I write experiences for my characters, and often they’re experiences I’ve never even come close to encountering. A romantic date, a delicious meal, a beautiful gown – I end up feeling a sense of memory for something I’ve never done, and probably never well. It’s one of the best and worst parts of being a writer. I recently went to the effort of writing the menu for a meal that’s meant to be delicious and technically impressive, truly one-of-a-kind… and then I looked in my own fridge, and all I had was a bag of shredded cheese and a hard-boiled egg. But at least I got to imagine what it would be like to sit at that groaning table covered in tiny plates…

I can never give any of them what they really want: I can’t fix a marriage, and I can’t undo a lie, and I can’t raise the dead. And I can never tell them, because they think they just want answers.

I worked as an office administrator for a long time, in office management and business operations. A huge part of that job – the part nobody tells you about – is the role of receiving other peoples’ emotional baggage. People come and freak out at you about sticky notes, because their marriage is in trouble and they don’t know how to fix it. They want solutions to solvable problems, and they want those solutions to somehow repair the broken parts of their lives that feel too hard to solve. And you can’t say “hey, I know you want pink sticky notes and I’ll get them for you as fast as I can, but can you please just go have that fight with your wife so you can stop yelling at me?”

The thing about me is, I let things go. I let people go. I don’t know how to hang on to them—I try, but I hold too tight or not tight enough or something in between and they go. They always go.

In the time since I wrote this book, I’ve come to terms with a lot of things. One of the things is how fluid relationships are. I grew up thinking that if a relationship – a friendship, a romance, a familial bond – ended, it meant something catastrophic had happened. But really, people just change and grow, coming together and drifting apart. It’s still hard, though, and it’s hard to remember that drifting apart doesn’t have to be permanent. I recently started the process of rebuilding an old friendship, and it feels like magic. Is there someone you’ve held onto for a long time? Is there someone you yearn to reconnect with?

Being brave means holding your fear in one hand and your responsibility in the other, and this kid was doing what he thought was right, even while he was pants-shittingly scared of whatever he’d found out.

I think there’s a big difference between being brave and being fearless. Being brave requires fear – you can’t have courage if you were never scared to begin with. I often think that kids are some of the bravest people there are, because life is so scary for them, but they try new things anyway! A baby doesn’t know whether taking a step will lead to adventure or doom, but it pushes itself up and waddles around and falls down over and over again. If that’s not brave, I don’t know what is.

Alphabet rubbed her head against his ankles, and Rahul leaned down absently to scratch her behind the ears. His shirt rode up over his side, and my mouth went dry at the stretch of skin that was revealed.

The character of Rahul – and Ivy’s romance with him – were an enormous refuge for me in the process of writing this book. In early drafts, I leaned on that a little too heavily, giving myself relief from writing the tough stuff by adding more and more details to Rahul’s character and how great he was. I had to trim a lot out later, because he was forming too solid of a safety net for the emotional tension of the story. But I kept his cat, Alphabet, because I just loved her too much to give up. I also had to trim out a whole other character – Ivy’s best friend and office assistant, Chuck, who was a hunky doofus with a baby he loved. My brilliant editor pointed out that Chuck kept the reader from thinking anything really bad could ever happen to Ivy, so he had to go. I’m sad to have lost Chuck, both because he was a great character… and because part of me was hoping someone out there would write some great Chuck/Rahul fanfic.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you so much for loving Magic for Liars! I’m so lucky to have such incredible readers out there in the world. I hope you’ll check out THE ECHO WIFE, my upcoming novel and the second book in my unofficial Unlikeable Female Protagonist Trilogy. I’m so proud of it and I can’t wait to share it with the world. Thank you again!! Love, Gailey https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52379735-the-echo-wife