In the Cauldron: Secrets, Second Chances, and a Little Supernatural Mischief.

A helping of secrets

The Secrets We Keep has recently had me busy with final edits, cover work, and the behind-the-scenes business of getting a story ready for readers.

Even the title offers a useful question to carry into October: what does keeping a secret cost?

There’s a difference between a private piece of your life and a truth you’re working very hard to bury. In fiction, that difference can do a remarkable amount of damage.

Maybe someone is trying to protect a person they love. Maybe they’re protecting their own comfortable version of events. Maybe they’ve told themselves a story so often that they no longer remember where the truth ends.

Give me a character with a good reason to stay quiet, then put someone at the door who needs an answer. Now we have something worth stirring. Of course, once you add a ghost, a vampire, or an inconvenient little flicker of psychic knowledge, staying quiet becomes rather more complicated.

The supernatural has terrible manners when it comes to other people’s privacy.

Women with more up their sleeves

Another ingredient I keep coming back to is a woman discovering that there’s more to her than she—or anyone around her—has allowed for. That discovery doesn’t have to arrive with a dramatic flourish. Although I respect a flourish. It can begin with a small refusal, an uncomfortable question, or the realization that keeping everyone else happy has become a full-time job without benefits.

Then the magic turns up, and the situation gets interesting.

Laramie Harper’s world brings its own brand of vampire complications. Over in Cheese Louise, Gertie Pratt has dormant psychic abilities and a ghost to contend with. Their circumstances are different, but both give me room to explore what happens when an ordinary life becomes something its owner can no longer explain away.

Finding out you have power is one thing. Deciding what to do with it is where the trouble starts. And where the story starts earning its keep.

Something comforting, something crooked

October makes room for a particular kind of reading pleasure: the comfort of settling into a story while knowing that something in it is decidedly wrong.

A familiar place. A character whose company you enjoy. A cat who knows things the heroine doesn’t. Then a detail that doesn’t belong.

Someone knows something they shouldn’t. Someone’s explanation is a little too polished. Someone who ought to be dead has decided that doesn’t work for them.

That’s a lovely arrangement for a reader. You get to investigate from the safety of your chair, with a drink nearby and absolutely no obligation to open the ominous cupboard yourself.

It’s also part of what draws me to magical mysteries. There’s room for humor, friendship, and everyday aggravations alongside the danger. Even supernatural shenanigans benefit from a little Southern snark.

Your turn to stir

So that’s what’s in this month’s cauldron: a few carefully guarded truths, women with more power than they expected, and trouble lurking somewhere inconvenient.

When you’re reading a mystery, which kind of secret hooks you fastest: a hidden identity, an old betrayal, a family secret, or someone concealing a supernatural ability?

Tell me in the comments. And if your answer is “all of the above,” pull up a chair. We may need a bigger cauldron.

Beware of Bumpies,

J.C. Keough