A Balance of Reality

I recently sent a new manuscript to my agent (Yay me!), and for the first time (don’t judge too much) I actually talked to my agent before starting the project about what he thought the market would be most open to. I’m usually a follow the bright shiny idea and create a strange new world kind of writer, but this project had rules from the beginning: mostly reality with a touch of magic allowed.

Paranormal creatures okay; minotaurs in the supermarket, not so much. A little bit of spell work, but not to the level where magic is considered commonplace.

The set parameters created some interesting challenges.

To a certain point, you want your reader to understand the rules that your characters must follow.

But how do you balance mystery, understanding, and the dreaded info dump?

How do you choose which version of the paranormal creatures you want to use? I didn’t want to use the plain Jane version, but if fantasy is the background element, you don’t want to stray so far from the well-known lure that the readers have to overthink the presence non-human characters.

I’m really pleased with how the project turned out and super excited to hear what my agent thinks!