A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Release Shenanigans – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    I try to alternate weeks between writing posts and book review posts buuuuuut….

    But this week the paperback edition of Nora and the Duke of Autumn was released and so I am going to steal today for shouting my excitement from the rooftops.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    For those just joining us, Nora’s story sparked with a X (then Twitter) conversation about how I loved the concept of Lucifer having a therapist in the show of the same name. Another writer and I were chitchatting about how the characters in our novels all deserved some therapy after what we put them through, and I made the offhand comment about how a lot of the romance couples needed this too.

    Bam.

    Nora’s story was born.

    An empathic wizard living in Boston who provides counseling to the supernatural living amongst us? The possibilities were endless.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    In the first book, I had a lot of fun introducing the world(s) where Fairy and Earthside coexist and teasing at the deeper lore hidden behind Nora’s ignorance.

    I knew a couple of things walking in. First, I knew I wanted relationships to be highlighted. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we saw several relationships throughout. We saw a bride and her mother, a bride and her groom, a son and his mother, and a grandson and his grandfather, all of which played significant roles in the story.

    In Nora and the Duke of Autumn, we see Nora struggling with her personal relationships, and we see a young son rebelling against his parents, as well as a broken mother and daughter relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything here, so I’m going to be purposefully vague. There are brothers and lovers and friendships throughout the book that Nora is able to influence in some way.

    The second thing I knew walking into this series was that I wanted magic to be hidden in plain sight of humanity. Don’t ask me why, but this story can only exist with the parallel between Earth and Fairy. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we stuck real close to Earthside, but in Duke of Autumn we take that major plunge into the Fairy. Sixty percent of the novel is traipsing through my steampunk version of Fairy, and I had a blast writing it.

    Everything else about the books has grown over time and will likely continue to grow as I delve deeper into the series.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Siren Song

    SPEAKING OF WHICH…

    I am excited to announce that by the end of April, I will have a completed draft of Nora and the Siren Song. (Yes, that’s only a couple of days away. Yes, I am THAT close. Currently I am sitting on the final chapter and the epilogue.)

    So here is me, throwing confetti for the paperback release of Nora and the Duke of Autumn AND finishing the draft of Nora and the Siren Song.

    Come on, 2024, let’s see what else we can get done.

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

  • Paperback Release! Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    Woo! Today is the day!

    You can get Nora and the Duke of Autumn in both Paperback and Hardback from Amazon. Here are the links!

    PAPERBACK LINK

    HARDBACK LINK

    A couple of things to note…

    #1 – This is only the physical copy release date. The KINDLE version is still up for preorder until its official release in August. Don’t ask me why, but Amazon would not let me schedule them at the same time. It seems weird to me, but hey, it is what it is. Just means those of you who like physical copies get to enjoy the book first.

    #2 – Major thanks to those on my ARC team who have left reviews/ratings. You are all super stars.

    Don’t know where to leave a review?

    I can help with that!

    Goodreads and Amazon are still both the best spots for this. Here’s the GOODREADS link for this book in particular. And here’s the spot Amazon.

    Don’t have time to leave a full review? No problem! You can just hit the stars and I promise that’s just as good. Even if you give it 1 star because you hated it (please always be honest) the ratings are there to help people see if it’s something they’d be interested in reading.

    FROM THE BACK COVER::

    We call ourselves the Bright.

    Most of us look like you.

    We live next door and shop in the same stores. We laugh and cry and work, just like you.

    There’s only one difference between us…Magic.

    When Nora Grayson grudgingly took a premarital counseling job for a pair of socialite werewolves she never expected to unearth secrets about her own family. Her life in upheaval, Nora tries to piece together the truth after her so-called caretakers have gone on the run, stealing not only answers, but every cent Nora had saved. To make matters worse, Derrick King has been called to London to handle the werewolf clans there, putting a significant pause on their budding relationship.

    Clinging to the hope of his return, Nora must rely on Constable Elliot Cade and the rest of his team as they continue to sort through the shattered pieces of Nora’s life. When evidence of murder is discovered in her Uncle Martin’s pawn shop, Nora and the team must reopen a decade old cold case in their hunt for answers. As the team narrows down their investigation, Nora must prepare for a trip to Fairy, where Bright politics prove to be as unforgiving as they are deadly.

    Nora and the Duke of Autumn Moodboard!

  • Book Review – Tune in Tomorrow by Randee Dawn

    This is a fun, lighthearted read. You delve into the strange world of Fairy Entertainment, which was a neat concept. There were places where I wish the author would have slowed down and allowed us to really live in the world she had created for a minute. I mean, we read these things to escape but I barely got an impression of what the backstage elements were like.

    The characters were all colorful and it was interesting to see them reacting to different things. I will note that these were also bare impressions at times, like the bigger personalities were simply that and I wished there was more to explain why they behave as they do, but many of them are creatures of Fairy so perhaps they are meant to be caricatures instead of characters.

    All in all, it was a fun, popcorn read. Go into it expecting a fast pace and some Fairy weirdness and you’ll have a good time. There are no major explicit scenes but stuff is implied in places, it might not be suitable for the youngest among us.

    Happy Reading!

    Purchase Link – Tune In Tomorrow by Randee Dawn

  • Ventures Into Fairy – Nora Grayson Edition

    When I set out to write Nora’s story I did not know what I was getting into. I had a vague premise – marital counselor for supernatural creatures – and a sort of Clue setting for Werewolf Wedding. I quite like the game Clue, and massive old houses with loads of history, and since my other books were feeling a bit too heavy, I wanted to have some fun with this one.

    It did not take long for me to realize I had a lot more here than Clue meets Fairy Creatures, but I fought the desire to dig further because I didn’t want to write a series. I wanted a standalone novel and I struggled mightily to force this narrative into submission.

    (Insert manic laughter here.)

    The fact is, I had too much fun with Nora and her world. I’m still having boat loads of fun, in fact, and I sincerely hope I continue in this vein.

    For those who haven’t read Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, the basic summary is that Fairy was created so that Bright folk (aka Fae creatures) could hide from humanity, who were hunting them for their magic. Bright creatures can access the way to Fairy through any body of water, and make frequent crossings between Fairy and Earthside.

    With Nora and the Duke of Autumn being released in paperback next month, it seemed prudent to mention that we dive heavily into Fairy in this book.

    Nora has not been to Fairy, for reasons you’ll have to explore in the books, and her brief forays into Fairy in Werewolf Wedding leave a whole wide world out there unexplored. Happily, this gets remedied with Duke of Autumn. Nora not only gets to see more of Fairy, she gets to meet — you guessed it — Fae nobility.

    Why did I choose Autumn for the setting?

    Uh… because it’s my favorite.

    I also revisited one of my favorite steampunk settings with a dirigible. However, fans of Witch-Born will notice this dirigible is a bit different, particularly with the amount of fairy creatures and the heavier focus on steam powered items on board.

    Among the more challenging aspects of writing Fairy has been the need to show a kind of mish-mash of cultures. Having Fairy lean on steampunk has been a fun physical means of differentiating between it and Earthside, however, and I look forward to continuing in this vein. It shows that humans have still left their fingerprints on Fairy, and while they have many traditions they call The Fairy Way, there are still some bits of technology that have been fused with magic to make their way of life a little easier.

    I could go into a deep dive in the books, but I have chosen not to. The books already edge toward the super high end of the word count spectrum and while it’s fun for me to know Nicola Tesla was a wizard in my world setting, it might bog down the pacing.

    But hey, the series has at least one more book for me to write. Maybe it’ll come to light in the narrative naturally.

  • Book Review – House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas

    So there has been a lot of conversation around this book. Some people hating it, some people loving it. Most people falling somewhere in between.

    I fear I fall “somewhere in between” loving and hating it.

    I’ve followed some of the arguments about how this is Bryce’s story and while many people may have wanted to see a larger gathering of talents and minds for this war, I’m afraid that’s not where I felt the most disappointed. I fully accepted that these people did not know one another and that a crossover beyond what we saw was unlikely to occur.

    The things that bothered me were not that Bryce was a turd to Azriel and Nesta, but rather that Bryce never seems to grow.

    Like… ever.

    The reason I loved the original Crescent City novel, and what had me picking up the second novel, was that Bryce grew an incredible amount in that first book. She underwent some horrifying things and she as a character grew from them. She is precisely the same person at the end of House of Flame and Shadow as she was at the beginning, and she really should not be.

    Enter the Spoiler Zone.

    I do hate giving spoilers, but the things that bother me about this book require some details, so here it goes.

    #1 – At no point did I fear Bryce would lose.

    Someone should have perished. Someone we cared about. They needed to LOSE somewhere in this novel, and in a big way. But even when they kind of-sort-of lost, that person was brought back from the brink of death and still played a major role in the end scenes. The book falls flat because nothing was really at stake.

    #2 – The… info-dump magic video-montage.

    This lasted… uh… for ages. And it gave way too much away. Sure, it was interesting at first, but I remember that every time we flashed back to Bryce in the cave listening/watching to the history that I started to groan and asked, out loud to my very confused husband; “We’re really just going to spoon feed me everything right here?”

    The book would have been far more interesting if some of this magic-montage-history-lesson had been corrupted somehow. Say, maybe, at the water parasites… and instead of just having Bryce show up and mention they have a water problem, the Ocean Queen could maybe have been investigating this all along since… you know… she’s an OCEAN QUEEN and innately tied to the water.

    But that’s just my gripe here. The big mysteries were explained and unveiled too early on.

    #3 – Hunt got sacrificed to Bryce’s awesomeness too much.

    My lord, if she mentioned Bryce doing all this amazing stuff in her pink shoes one more time I was going to lose my mind. What little Hunt was allowed to do never eclipsed or matched what Bryce did. Ever. It made him the weaker of the two, rather than her equal in the relationship, and this… This frustrated me the most. Relationships are built on give and take, and we read Romance and Romantic Fantasy to see two people come together and work out how this looks for them specifically.

    Hunt was constantly on his back foot and I kept waiting for him to have a moment where he got to do some of the giving, or even have his own idea that surprises us all where he narrowly skates through danger, but he was never given this opportunity.

    Now…

    All that said, I gave the book 4 stars. The series is a worthwhile read for worldbuilding alone, and the Ruhn and Lidia plotline had me invested through this book. In fact, Ruhn seemed to carry the novel the most as he and Lidia had the stakes I was looking for and seemed to struggle the most to overcome the circumstances and problems surrounding them.

    Happy Reading!

    PURCHASE LINK!

  • The Nitty-Gritty – Writing a Series

    I will preface this blog entry with the reminder that what works for me might not work for others. Writing is an ever-evolving craft wherein I learn something new with every single book. What follows are simply the steps that I’ve found work for me.

    Maybe this will change in a year. Maybe my writing process will remain the beautiful chaos it is now until the day I pass on from this life. I honestly don’t know.

    Let me also say that I never set out to write a SERIES.

    I simply set out to tell a story. Sometimes that story winds up being far bigger than original anticipated, is all.

    The Nora Grayson Series is by far my largest undertaking, and the possibilities for offshoots keep cropping up. Which is either super exciting or daunting, I can’t decide which. Regardless, the fact that it has grown so very large in my head means that I have had to take some serious steps to keep things in line.

    I’ve mentioned the Story Bible before, which for me is a singular notebook that has the outlines, draft notes, and character notes of every book in the series in it. When I say it’s chaos, I mean that it is absolute chaos. There are different shades of ink, there are scribbled notes in the margins, there are highlighted bits and then question marks beside those highlighted bits and timelines and character questions everywhere.

    I pity the man who picks it up and tries to make sense of it.

    For me, however, it is my happy place.

    It’s my Muse at her most free, dallying here and there with tantalizing possibilities. I have no rules for the Story Bible other than I’m concentrating on this one series and no other books. There are, however, what I call KEY pages.

    For instance, I have one KEY page titled: SET IN STONE.

    This seems self-explanatory, but these are the key elements of the story that have already been published. Details go in here that I often need to reference such as Nora’s home address. It is sectioned out between books, so for Werewolf Wedding I have a running list of names for those she met in that book and how they correspond to her and then any unresolved matters that did not get addressed in that particular novel.

    With each new book, the SET IN STONE page grows. For obvious reasons.

    Readers are smart, and I don’t want to upset one by assuming they aren’t going to notice that Delilah’s eyes changed from green to blue between Books One and Three. Or if they do change color, it better make sense in the story.

    Which brings me to the most important part of writing a series…

    Reading.

    Or rather, re-reading. I’m working on these concurrently, so I have an audio version of Werewolf Wedding being narrated to me, am doing final pass edits on Duke of Autumn, am drafting Siren Song, and outlining Winter King. There’s a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of details I don’t want to miss.

    If it looks overwhelming, don’t worry. The fact is, I’m having a blast. I love Nora and these stories and I cannot wait to share them with you. Truthfully, if I am ever not having fun, it normally means I’ve lost sight of the story and need to go back to the Story Bible and flip through it.

    There are a ton more KEY pages in my Story Bible, such as the Compost Dump that I’ve mentioned before. (I still recommend Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on Writing. You won’t regret it.) But I want to highlight one more before I run off for the day. This KEY page is titled: The Lies They Believe.

    It’s a very evocative title, I know.

    We’ll take Nora for example. MILD SPOILERS INBOUND.

    Werewolf Wedding – The Lies Nora Believes – is that she is a low level empath whose only use is as a counselor. Further, she’s a burden to her Nana Bess and Uncle Martin – especially Uncle Martin. She believes Fairy is a place where criminals and reprobates thrive, that decent people never go there, because this is what Bess and Martin have told her. This lie is reinforced by the fact that her own parents abandoned Fairy before she was born, though they never told her precisely why.

    Why is this page KEY?

    Because by the end of Werewolf Wedding, Nora has to see through these lies, if not confront them.

    Happy Writing!

    Purchase Link – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    Pre-Order Link – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

  • Book Review – The Broken Kingdoms Series by LJ Andrews

    First of all…

    Yes, I discovered this author via BookTok.

    A ton of my friends encouraged me to check out Book Tok and since I was already on TikTok, I decided to check it out.

    Please, no politics and raging in my comments, social media constantly has backlash from people who dislike certain platforms and I’m old enough to remember the rise and fall of many of them. Suffice, anything and everything can be exploited for attention/misdirection or to earn a buck, the responsibility falls on you to do your research and participate with moderation and intelligence.

    SO!

    The Ever King by LJ Andrews has a fantastic book trailer that caught my attention. And I devoured that book in two days only to discover it had a major cliffhanger at the end. Which.. fair. It’s a marketing strategy and it worked well on me since I went out and grabbed Curse of Shadows and Thorns by the same author whilst waiting for the next book.

    Which is a roundabout way of saying how I stumbled into the Broken Kingdoms Series, but there you have it. The books are on Kindle Unlimited, which is good because I have a husband who loves me and wants me to be able to read at my own pace (often quite fast) so we have a Kindle Unlimited account.

    Say what you want about Amazon, Kindle Unlimited is brilliant. One price every month and I have access to millions of titles? This. Saves. Me. Heartache. And it makes authors money who would otherwise have been passed over because my book budget would only allow for X amount of novels that month.

    Anyway, Curse of Shadows and Thorns is the introduction to the Broken Kingdoms series by LJ Andrews and I adored this story. Yes, it’s adult. So walk in with your eyes open. Yes, it’s romance. It’s Vikings meet Fae, full of wonder and hope and tragedy.

    Now, I will admit that I saw the twist coming in Book 3. Yes, there are tropes and some predictable elements by the time you hit books 4 and 5, but at the end of the day… I had so much fun reading them.

    Just… fun.

    And really, as much as I love books that open my heart and mind to other cultures and ways of life, sometimes you just want a girl to see the good man beneath the monstrous exterior, and for love to conquer all the ugliness that came before it.

    Happy reading, everyone.

    PURCHASE LINK for Curse of Shadows and Thorns on Amazon!

  • About Character Growth – Part 2

    My first post about Character Growth dealt with Nora Grayson in particular. She is the main protagonist in the Nora Grayson Adventures and my focus was on how she has grown over the past several books. Currently I’m drafting Book 3 and outlining Book 4, so I have a pretty good idea what she looks like at the end of the series compared to book 1.

    Today I’m looking at other characters in the books, which might have some mild spoilers but I’ll try to lean on the HINTING side instead of the outright telling you side of things. Because we all know I’m not big on spoiling books.

    First, I’ll say that some of the comments from Werewolf Wedding have been about the team in the CEB. That’s Lieutenant Eucilla Norwind, Derrick King, Elliot Cade, Gretchen, and Sam Witters.

    Basically, people want to know more about them.

    And I get it.

    Because I do too.

    I should preface this with saying I am a kind of hybrid author. I do a basic worldbuilding bit to start, and then the story surprises me with the details as I move forward. Which means I take a LOT of notes as I write. And I have a Story Bible that is constantly being referenced to make sure I haven’t broken canon already set in stone.

    Fun note: the Story Bible is the messiest thing you’ll ever see. It’s my creative brain at its finest, handwritten in multiple shades of ink with circles and highlights and extra punctuation. The outlines are done in here. And the read-through notes when I prep for editing.

    Why is this important?

    Because it means I only had a hint of who these people were when I started. They grew with the story and told me who they were mid-draft.

    Now, this won’t work for every author out there. Some need to know everything from which kind of peanut butter their character prefers to how many times a day they think about their mother. And that’s fine. That works for them.

    It does not work for me.

    Drafting is a conversation between me and the characters. It’s where they show me who they are and tell me their story. If I knew everything going in, I’d get bored and stop writing.

    Now, writing in a series means I have to keep a tighter grip on things. Each of them have to grow, have to show a little more of who they are, without breaking what’s already established. So… I do a weird thing, and maybe it’ll work for someone else but… here it goes.

    I have Scrivener. And Scrivener has this amazing tool where you make character sheets. Before I start each book, I go through that messy Story Bible and type up what has already been established for each character. It’s my Filtered Download of the character, if you will. And then I go through my outline and put what I call CBP — Character Beat Points — at each chapter.

    CBP’s are comments and/or questions aimed at each character. Things like; How does Gretchen feel about the pawn shop? or Don’t forget Sam is still new to Earthside and doesn’t get a lot of the customs.

    And then, you know… I draft the first version.

    The CBP’s are mostly there to instigate questions that can be explored as the narrative unfolds. Oftentimes they lead to more interesting questions that get fleshed out between draft one and draft four.

    Anyway, that’s what I do. Maybe it’ll help someone else.

    Happy Writing!

  • Book Review – Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

    This book captured me. It dragged me back to the pages every time I tried to get on with my regular life and do some of my own work. It was enchanting. And smart. And I absolutely fell in love with the two main characters.

    Moreso, I fell in love with the way they fell in love with each other. Roman Kitt and Iris Winnow have leapt straight to the top of my favorite couples list. Right after Jamie and Claire Fraser.

    The world was everything I never knew I needed in a fantasy novel. WWII-esque with shades of magic. Where magic does very little outside of the pantheon and people maintain their day to day struggles of paying the bills. There are some special artifacts, like some enchanted typewriters, and the idea of a shop being able to weigh what’s in your coin purse and shuffle what you can afford straight to the front of the shelves.

    It was brilliant.

    I adored this book. Seriously.

    5 stars.

    5.5 if we want to tag a little extra on because Roman Kitt’s reactions when in the trenches hit me so hard in the guts that I could scarcely breathe.

    Divine Rivals Purchase Link!

  • About Character Growth – Part One

    As we’re gearing up for the release of Nora and the Duke of Autumn, I can’t help but see the differences in Nora Grayson’s character from book one. She’s still got a clear sense of right and wrong, her values haven’t changed even if everything about her life has been shattered, and she still has the compassion and empathy that I wanted to highlight in the first book.

    For those just joining us, Nora was inspired by the character of Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. In particular, the empathy that Deanna portrayed on the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise is something I snagged and enhanced for the character of Nora Grayson. Only instead of making her an alien she is, obviously, a half human magic wielder.

    Because it wouldn’t be a Fantasy novel otherwise.

    The idea was to let a character with Deanna Troi’s talents stand front and center of her own work, because emotions are important and we should allow ourselves to process them rather than… You know, bury them away and pretend they don’t exist.

    SO!

    How has Nora changed from Book One to Book Two?

    SPOILERS AHEAD! Turn back now if you don’t want to know.

    …

    Still here?

    Alright, for starters, in book one Nora was confronted with the fact that her two caretakers – Nana Bess and Uncle Martin – are criminals. This eye-opener has wrought a lot of strife in her. She feels stupid, and every new part of Fairy that she learns about is feeding her rage at having been duped.

    Book Two has her struggling to find a sense of self again. There’s some self-pity in there because, well, who wouldn’t be ashamed? But this second book is all about overcoming that shame and finding the strength to make something new. By the end of Book Two, she has more control over her own life and is ready to start building again.

    Which is why Book Three is so very, very romantic.

    Ahem.

    Gird your loins, people. The romance that has already begun is about to take center stage.

    And that’s the only spoiler I’m going to give you.

    Nora and the Werewolf Wedding is available on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited.

    Nora and the Duke of Autumn is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle.