Fairies in My Fireplace
Monster Haven Book Three
by R.L. Naquin
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Carina Press
Date of Publication: Sept. 3, 2013
Book Description:
Sometimes it’s the monsters who need to be saved…
A migration of mythical creatures has begun, and more and more of them are landing on Zoey Donovan's doorstep. As the only Aegis left in the country, it falls to her to protect the Hidden and keep them safe—and her house has become a sanctuary for water sprites, goblins, harpies, djinn and more.
Keeping track of her boarders is a full-time job, and Zoey's already got her hands full trying to run her wedding planning business. Good thing she has a resident closet monster to keep her organized, and a hot Reaper boyfriend to help her relax every once in a while.
But she can't keep up monster-triage indefinitely, and as more Hidden arrive, it becomes clear that someone—or something—is hunting them. In the midst of planning an event for a notoriously difficult client, Zoey's got to figure out who's behind the hunt…and she's got to stop them before there are no Hidden left.
How a Single Book Turned into a Six-Book Series
When I first set out to write Monster in My Closet, I had a vague notion that it had potential to be a series, but writing that first book—well, that was the goal. Get through this. Prove you can do it.
By the time I was finished, I'd figured out the mystery that wasn't going to get solved, the string I needed to leave hanging. I had no idea what the answer to The Big Question was, but I knew it was going to carry me through two more books.
While I wrote Pooka in My Pantry, The Big Answer hit me. I knew what had happened in Zoey’s past to set it all in motion, and I had a vague idea of what was going on in the present day outside my Zoey’s line of vision. The Big Answer was only one book away.
I started working on Fairies in My Fireplace. My editor asked if she could take a peek at the outline, so I sent it to her—not so much an outline, mind you, as a 1500-word ramble of sequential and non-sequential events and character arcs. She liked it very much, except for one thing.
One very, very big thing.
The way I'd planned it out, Fairies pretty much wrapped it all up with a nice bow, the bad guy taken care of, and a happily ever after. She didn’t want that. No, no, no. Shouldn't we save some of these things for book four? What about books five and six?
Now, I'll be honest, here. I'd planned a three-book arc, thinking that if it sold well, I could go back and write more of them somewhere down the line after doing other things. Anything past the original trilogy could be a brand new arc. The idea that the story was only half-told at the end of book three was both exhilarating and terrifying.
They don't tell you that one of the many jobs of an editor is to save you from your own shortsightedness.
Once she pointed out the problem to me, I realized that the protagonist in Fairies in My Fireplace, though terrible and fierce, is not the Biggest Bad out there. In fact, neither is the even Bigger Bad in book four, Golem in My Glovebox. To find out who’s really behind it all, you have to wait for books five and six. And let me tell you, I may not be able to sleep when I’m writing those last two books.
But that’s for another day. First, we’ve got monsters to save. And an entire tribe of fairies living in Zoey’s fireplace.
We’re only halfway there.
Rachel’s head is packed with an outrageous amount of useless Disney trivia. She is terrified of thunder, but not of lightning, and tends to recite the Disneyland dedication speech during storms to keep herself calm. She finds it appalling that nobody from Disney has called yet with her castle move-in date.
Originally from Northern California, she has a tendency to move every few years, resulting in a total of seven different states and a six-year stint in England. Currently, she’s planning her next grand adventure. Rachel has one heroic husband, two genius kids, a crazy-cat-lady starter kit, and an imaginary dog named Waffles.
She doesn’t have time for a real dog.
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