Goodreads asked Lisa Marie Basile:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Lisa Marie Basile During the the summer of 2014 -- I remember because I was blasting Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence -- I started writing about my personal experiences with family addiction, separation & my eventual move into foster care.

It's wild to think, but before then, I managed to write poetry and essays that rarely if ever touched on it, which meant my voice and my self and my expression was always half-real, half-honest, untouched by the very thing that made me me. That trauma was such a big part of my foundation and the lens through which I saw the world.

So one day in 2014 I wrote a piece about how foster kids belonged to no one & everyone, how we existed in a liminal space legally and physically. The thought of sharing this essay made me shook me to my core. Because then the world would know my past. It would reveal me as the traumatized thing I was before I wore a new era over my wounds. Yes, this essay said, I came from somewhere very real.

After finishing it, it was as though a spell were cast. I felt like the weight of a hundred galaxies came off my back. Because some of what I wrote were words I'd never even uttered to myself. And when I did write it it fell out of me like rain.

Fast forward to 2018. Light Magic for Dark Times, my book of practices and rituals for coping in a crisis, came out. My publisher asked if I had other ideas, and I felt both ready and compelled to write about writing as magic. This was the book I was meant to write.

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