Because I love fantasy. It’s been my favorite genre ever since I was five years old and my mother read The Hobbit aloud to me.

Writing a book takes a long time. When you’re going to spend years of your life working on a project, choosing something you love seems like the best way to go.

Growing up, my favorite type of fantasy featured magical people who each had a unique power. (Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels were some of the first “adult” books I ever read.) So it’s no coincidence that both Circus Mirandus and Tumble & Blue are based on systems of one magical talent per character. I suspected the book would involve that sort of magician before I was even entirely sure what the story was about.

I spent a lot of time daydreaming about all the things I would like to have at a magic circus. And I was also influenced by my memories of the local fair that my parents took me to see every year when I was little. We always went at night, and I kept finding myself automatically setting all the circus scenes at night, even when it didn’t make any sense.

I also loved the smell of the fair. In my memory, it smells like grass, diesel fuel motors, and funnel cake. I didn’t really think Circus Mirandus was a diesel fuel and funnel cake kind of place, so it became “grass and smoke and chocolate cake” in the book.

And my earliest carnival memory took place at a different, much tinier Fall Festival. My parents took me and my little sister. It was nighttime, and after the hay ride and pancakes we visited the fortune teller. I had never met a fortune teller, or any kind of magician, and I took the whole experience very seriously.

I still remember how momentous it felt, to have a mysteriously-dressed adult paying attention to everything I said and examining my palm.

I was a lot younger then than Ephraim and Micah are in this story, but I tried to capture that same sense of wonder when I was writing scenes between them and the Lightbender. That feeling of being on the verge of something important and unknown and that certainty that what you say and do in the moment matters a great deal…

As for my fortune, she said that I would be a teacher or a nurse when I grew up. And I was deeply pleased with both options.

Micah’s grandfather, Ephraim Tuttle, was one of the first characters I came up with. I pictured him as an old man with regrets, someone who had been full of magic (in the literal sense) as a child but who had never fulfilled his dreams because life had gotten in his way. I knew he desperately wanted to fix things, but he didn’t have much time left. 

I read an interview with Ray Bradbury in The Paris Review, and he told a story about how meeting a circus performer as a boy made him want to become a writer. One part, in particular, sparked my imagination:

“And there was Mr. Electrico sitting on the platform out in front of the carnival and I didn’t know what to say. I was scared of making a fool of myself. I had a magic trick in my pocket, one of those little ball-and-vase tricks—a little container that had a ball in it that you make disappear and reappear—and I got that out and asked, Can you show me how to do this? It was the right thing to do. It made a contact. He knew he was talking to a young magician.”

I thought the idea of two people bonding over a shared magic trick was lovely. It reminded me of my first encounter with a carnival magician (see above), and it inspired the flashback where Ephraim shows the Lightbender his knot-tying magic. 

My first idea was that the magicians at Circus Mirandus would grant wishes to kids, like benevolent genies. And of course they wouldn’t be used to children doing magic themselves. So I wondered…what would happen if Ephraim turned the tables by showing the most powerful magician at the circus how to do some new kind of magic instead? 

I thought the Lightbender would be so impressed he would offer to give Ephraim a miracle. 

The idea that Ephraim had a miracle saved up was the key to figuring out what the story would really be about.

I wanted, ultimately, to write a hopeful book. And the most hopeful character I could think of was Ephraim’s grandson Micah. I decided he would be the protagonist, and the story would be about his belief in the circus and his quest to reclaim that miracle before it was too late. 

The circus’s messenger parrot is by far the most popular character with kid readers, and she’s also one of my favorites to write about. Chintzy was inspired by my own housemate, an African Grey parrot named Spook the Bird.

(As I type this, Spook is sitting on her perch and yelling, “I want to get water!” Which is what she says when she wants me to take her to the kitchen. Unlike Chintzy, Spook can’t fly. Or, more accurately, she can fly, but she can’t land. Which is the worst of both worlds I’m afraid. So I’ll go fetch her as soon as I finish answering these questions.)

My family adopted Spook on Halloween. She’s gray, like a ghost, and that’s how she got her name. But her bright red tail became the inspiration for Chintzy’s red feathers.

Spook is bossy, talkative, funny, and prone to biting me. Chintzy is the same. I love them both.

Micah’s best friend Jenny was a big part of the story from the very first draft. It was important to me to write about friendship and to show that two people could be friends and treat each other with kindness and respect even though they disagreed about some pretty serious stuff. In a way, Jenny’s the opposite of Aunt Gertrudis. Neither one of them believes in magic. But Aunt Gertrudis mocks Micah and refuses to hear him out, while Jenny sticks with him. 

If I could be friends with just one character from the story, I’d choose Jenny.

A lot of people have asked me if I had a great aunt like Gertrudis. Fortunately not! My own great aunt was pretty much the sweetest lady in the world. She passed away recently, and I miss her terribly.

I wanted Micah to have an antagonist in his own house, someone who would fight back when he expressed faith in magic, and so Great Aunt Gertrudis came in with her passion for aquarobics and hot tea, her dislike of children, and her refusal to believe. 

(Note: I myself have nothing against aquarobics or hot tea. In fact, I quite like both!)

Gertrudis has a sad backstory, and I think a lot of people expected her to be redeemed in the end. Actually, I know a lot of people expected that, since they’ve told me so in person.

But it didn’t feel right.

Some tough things happened to Aunt Gertrudis in her childhood, but she’s been an adult for a long, long time when the story starts. I gave the character her chance at a redemption arc, but she wouldn’t take it.

Sometimes, I guess, people just don’t.

I’ve always liked the idea of magical carnivals, circuses, theaters, theme parks, zoos, toy stores, etc… They’re spaces where we go to experience wonder and escape from the real world for a while, so they’re natural settings for a fantasy.

Circuses and carnivals are pretty common in literature. And a lot of books also involve grandfatherly figures and the idea of magic being passed down from generation to generation, which is a central theme in Circus Mirandus. So, it’s not surprising that people ask if I was inspired by other books they love!

Readers have mentioned Roald Dahl’s work, Peter Pan, Big Fish, The Night Circus, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

I’m blushing because those are AMAZING stories! I didn’t read The Night Circus until I was almost finished with Circus Mirandus. But the other books, and the movie version of Big Fish (I’ll read it one day, I promise!), are favorites of mine.

I didn’t have them consciously in mind while I was working, but I do think your favorite stories seep into you and become a part of how you see the world. And how you see the world inevitably comes out in your writing. I think it’s only fair to call them inspirations.

By the way if you’re looking for more circus stories to read, you’re in luck. It’s something of a mini-genre, and you can read to your heart’s content. Here’s a list of over a hundred circus books, and that’s just counting YA and MG titles! 

First, let me apologize and reassure you that I love animals. I particularly love birds. I’m sorry so many of them die in this book at Victoria’s hands. I have already apologized to Spook and Chintzy.

I’ve always thought that if you dig deep enough into the heart of evil, what you inevitably find is pure, unvarnished selfishness and an utter lack of empathy. So that’s what I focus on when I’m writing Victoria.

I think, What’s the most selfish thing she could do at this moment? How would someone behave right here if they just didn’t care who they hurt?

I love the Lightbender. He’s what I imagined a master magician would be like when I was a kid, right down to the leather duster! I spent a lot of time thinking about what power the Man Who Bends Light should have. I wanted it to be something very impressive, so that Micah would believe he could help, but ultimately it had to be a talent that wouldn’t do anything to save Grandpa Ephraim’s life.

I chose illusion as the magic for metaphorical reasons.

There is a whole lot of back story about why the Lightbender calls himself that, when his power is actually related to mind manipulation, but it was cut during the revision process. I finally have the chance to share a little of that info with readers in The Bootlace Magician.

If I had to write a prequel about any character in the book, I would definitely want to tell the rest of the Lightbender’s story.

I wanted to choose a magic that was unassuming, to match Micah’s personality.

I’d already brought the boots and their leather laces into the story so that the fish could swim into them. (I always pictured those boots as my dad’s farm boots! So that’s another little bit of inspiration.)

Knot-tying seemed like a natural fit, and the more I wrote about it, the more I realized it was perfect for the characters.

I love the story’s climactic chapter so much, and it’s all because of that gorilla balloon!

When I was young, there was a giant inflatable gorilla in front of a car dealership we drove past. I wanted it.

Of course, you can’t soar off with a giant gorilla balloon in real life, but you can grow up and become an author and let your characters do it for you. 

I actually toyed with the idea of giving Micah the power to fly, like his grandmother, when he lets go of the balloon. A lot of young readers have mentioned having the same idea, and it would have been a lot of fun. But in the end I decided one magic talent per person would be enough for my world.

I keep a list of names I like, and every name on the list has a kind of feeling to it. Just a little snip of the person who goes with it, even though they haven’t got their own story yet. Micah was on that list. So were Ephraim and Jenny. 

I also have a list of cool titles, and back when I wrote short stories, I would usually come up with the title before anything else. But that doesn’t work quite so well for me with novels. I end up changing too many things along the way, and my titles don’t make sense anymore.

(By the way, a lot of people wonder if the names Obadiah, Ephraim, and Micah have a special religious significance in the story. I didn’t intend for them to! I’m a religious person myself, but the names are meant to be just names.)