Carry On (Simon Snow, #1)

by Rainbow Rowell

Nobody knows why my magic is the way it is. Why it goes off like a bomb instead of flowing through me like a fucking stream or however it works for everybody else.

As an avid fantasy reader, I was very intimidated by the idea of writing fantasy. I didn’t think I had it in me to detach from the real world. I was trained as a journalist, and my other books tend to be very grounded in real places and experiences. I waded into fantasy with my book Fangirl, framing the Simon Snow story inside a realistic, contemporary novel. (If you haven’t read Fangirl, it’s kind of fun to read it AFTER the Simon Snow books.) But once I worked past that initial fear and insecurity, I realized how much fun it is to write fantasy. You get to make things up! I liked thinking about how magic felt for each of the Carry On characters – and how Simon’s power could be more intense but also less manageable. How unstable it made him feel.