Fantasy writer C.M. Waggoner talks to us about her latest supernatural cosy crime novel 'The Village Library Demon Hunting Society' and tells us how she became (almost) fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
C.M. Waggoner grew up in rural upstate New York, where she spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels in a swamp. She studied creative writing at SUNY Purchase and lived in China for eight years before moving with her husband to Albany, NY. She is the author of three books, Unnatural Magic, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, and her latest The Village Library Demon Hunting Society which is published by Penguin Books on 24 September. You can find all of these titles on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
Our house was always completely packed with books when I was a kid, so some of my very earliest memories are of books and reading. I did also spend a lot of time at our local public library and at the little library at my elementary school. I always loved the library because it gave me so much freedom — I could get whatever book I wanted without an adult having to purchase it for me.
Pretty long and winding! I always knew I wanted to write books, but it took me a while to get there. I messed around with a few novel ideas as a high schooler and while I was studying creative writing in college, but none of them really went anywhere, and there were a couple of years after college when I barely wrote at all. I finally started writing my first book, Unnatural Magic, over a decade ago while I was working for the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, China, but it was a very sporadic nights-and-weekends kind of project and progress was slow. Then my husband and I took almost a year off to travel around Southeast and South Asia, which was a great opportunity to get the first draft of the book done.
After that I had a series of lucky breaks – my first agent, Jennifer Udden, found me via a random internet encounter and did an amazing job of helping me get the book edited into good-enough shape to appeal to a few different editors, and we ended up going with the wonderful Jessica Wade at Penguin, who got me the rest of the way there. Unnatural Magic was published about six years after I started writing it.
During the day I usually put my laptop into my little backpack and walk to one of the coffee shops in my neighborhood to work. I like the feeling of physically going to work and then packing up and going home again once I’ve hit my word count for the day. I also sometimes write while curled up on my living room couch late at night when everyone else is asleep – fewer distractions that way!
One of the great things about writing fantasy instead of, say, historical fiction or modern police procedurals is that I can just make stuff up whenever I want. That said, I do end up doing a lot of research! I spend a lot of time reading about stuff like when and how vulcanized rubber came into common use, or when to use the word “pistol” versus “revolver.” I’m aiming for verisimilitude as opposed to strict accuracy – the places and things I’m writing about might not be real, but I want them to feel as if they could be real in some alternate universe. I probably depend too much on Wikipedia, but I also own some really great books that I use as references, and I’ve even reached out to actual professionals in different fields when I’m having trouble finding the answer to something.
I’m a huge lifelong fan of cozy mysteries, but I’ve always thought there was something very funny about the extent to which you have to suspend your disbelief over how often the amateur sleuth hero just happens to be somewhere right before a baffling murder happens. After a while you start to wonder whether Miss Marple might be a deranged serial killer. The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is me combining my cozy mystery fandom with my fantasy novelist brain and coming up with a supernatural explanation for that problem. It stars an intrepid small-town librarian named Sherry Pinkwhistle, who’s fully enjoying her homicide-solving hobby until a series of events forces her to consider the idea that something very wicked may have come to the charming little village of Winesap, New York. I wanted to make it funny, cheeky and genre-savvy while also serving up some legitimate clues and twists for my fellow mystery lovers. I hope that I succeeded!
Not really, though some of her weird free-association trains of thought are kind of like mine.
Yes, I wanted to leave that open as an option! I had a lot of fun writing this book and would enjoy writing another about Sherry and her friends.
This is a recommendation made sixty-five years too late – it came out in 1959 – but the best book I’ve read so far this year was definitely Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It’s historical nonfiction that reads like an unrealistic Hollywood blockbuster.
I’ve had a few different jobs, and I’m honestly lucky that the writing thing has been working out, because I don’t think I was all that good at any of them. I actually kind of enjoy working retail in a small shop, so maybe I could be the least responsible employee in a bookstore or flower shop.
I feel like I’m a pretty open book, but sometimes people are surprised when they find out that I speak Mandarin Chinese at home with my husband. I lived in China for eight years and learned enough to get by in day-to-day conversation, though my vocabulary is pretty embarrassingly limited. One day I’d like to start taking classes again so that I can really read novels and watch complicated movies in Chinese without getting completely lost.
