We chat with author Reena McCarty about The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains, which follows a former changeling who must return to the land of the Fae to right a bargain that’s gone terribly wrong in this delightful cosy fantasy debut packed full of charm, adventure, romance and heart.
Hi, Reena! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi, and thanks for having me! I live in western Montana, where I spend as much time as I can outside, while also writing and working in a kitchen. I spend too much time thinking about musical theatre, and I don’t have any pets because my neighbors’ cat has claimed my apartment as her auxiliary territory and I’d hate to make her mad.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I don’t really remember discovering a love for stories—it was either always there, or instilled in me so young that I can’t recall ever being without it. I do know my earliest storytelling was more theatrical—making up “plays” to inflict on my family at holidays, or acting out sometimes years-long epics in the sandbox in the yard.
My first attempt at specifically writing a novel was when I was about 15, because I didn’t want to have to get a summer job, and I thought that if I could convince my parents that I was writing a book–a thing that very well could be my job someday—I could get out of having to find paid employment. I suspect it worked more because I couldn’t drive and they didn’t want to have to take me back and forth than anything else, but ultimately I did become a writer. I scammed so hard I fell for it myself.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: No idea—the line between “had read to me” and “read myself” is much too blurry. Maybe a Boxcar Children book?
- The one that made you want to become an author: All of them. I can’t point to one specific book, more a generalized love of stories and storytelling.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner.
Your debut novel, The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Poison nostalgia, careful words, hiking
What can readers expect?
The book is about Poppy, a woman who, after being stolen by faeries as a young child in the late 1800s and spending roughly a century living in the faerie world of Otherside, is abruptly returned to 21st century America and required by law to go work for a company that brokers and insures faerie bargains in return for an education in modern life and the papers she needs in order to eventually live it. Of course, things go wrong, and she finds herself forced back Otherside in order to fix a mistake that could bring the whole company down. I think it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a fairly serious look at what it means to idealize a past that might actually not have been that great. There are stabbings and treachery, and delicious food, and some VERY MINOR romantic elements (I’m always really worried that people are expecting a second chance romance, and it’s not one!)
Where did the inspiration for The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains come from?
It was an offhand joke—a quick “if faeries were real, do you think you’d have to buy faerie insurance?” while walking in the woods and seeing something like a mushroom circle or a branch that arched down like a door. I started thinking much too hard about faerie insurance and what that might look like, and how the best people to check your faerie deals would be people who’d been taken by faeries and come back alive, and things really just sort of got out of hand.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I was really determined to make my faeries distinctly inhuman. I wanted them to feel alien and strange and to make sense but based in a logic that wasn’t human—my faeries don’t have creativity. They can’t look at the world and see it in any way other than what it is. They can’t write or paint or cook or dream, and it was really difficult to write people like that who are also people, even when they’re very strange and often quite cruel. I also wanted to make sure that Poppy’s relationships with these characters made sense from her perspective. It was all a really interesting challenge.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I think the biggest issues I had on a writing level were just figuring out how to write a book that was very different from what I’d been trying to write before—Tricky was the first book I wrote for an adult audience, and it was the first book I wrote in the first person, and it was the first book since I was a kid that I very intentionally set in the place I’m from—the book more or less takes place along a 60 mile stretch of the highway I take to visit my parents, so it’s very close to home for me. There was a lot of letting go of what I thought of as A Book, and just letting myself write something that was authentic to me and my experiences.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
Long! I started writing with the goal of publication in 2013, and it took several tries to get a book that was any good. I’m a slow writer, so it would be a couple years of work and then a “nope, it’s as good as I can make it but not good enough” moment and I’d start over. And then once I had a draft of Tricky that I thought was good enough, it was another almost two years to find an agent. At the same time I was querying I also hit a patch of burnout and I just could not write, so I was trying to start this career while also panicking that I was never going to have another idea or write another word and what even was the point. So it was ultimately a good thing that it took as long as it did, since it gave me time to heal, and by the time the book actually sold I was ready to go.
What’s next for you?
The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains is book one in a duology, so I’m currently finishing up book 2, which should be out next year!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Oh, so many! I’m really looking forward to All Hail Chaos by Sarah Rees Brennan—I’m constantly behind on my reading, but I’m currently rereading Long Live Evil just so I can go in fully refreshed. I can’t wait for The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon, Every Version of You by Natalie Messier, The Halls of the Dead by SM Hallow—I feel bad listing just a few because there are so many. I have to leave most of them out unless I want to go on for much longer than anyone wants!
