A Little More Magical

For as long as I can remember, some part of me knew I was destined to be a writer. You might wonder why a small child would think that. The answer is pretty simple. My name means writing. As a child who grew up hearing that, I realized that it was something important and that it was something that kind of belonged to me.

My first memory of writing was back in the first grade. I had an activity in class to write a very short story, with illustrations. It was supposed to be a retelling of any classic well-known story. We were given simple white board books, blank canvases that we could turn into anything we wanted. I decided to rewrite the story of the three little pigs. I called it, The Three Little Fish. It was set underwater. I don’t remember much about it, but that was the first time I saw my name on the cover of a book, proudly lining the bottom of the front cover. I remember feeling a sense of fierce pride. This was something I had created and no one could take it away from me.

I grew up in the Wells-Turner memorial library in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It had a lush green lawn where the library often hosted events under the comfortably warm sun. It sat proudly on the corner of the main road. Its white walls and stacks of books were my second home. The children’s section was bright and beautifully decorated, designed to invite young readers in and make them want to stay. The child-sized play house was the perfect place for children to hide and escape into their own imaginary worlds. The story time corner was dark and warm, best suited for curling up and listening to bedtime stories or making little paper crafts.

As I kept reading, I began to look beyond the words on the page and the way those words made me feel. I noticed the distinctive voices authors created, the ways they built characters, and how their writing evolved from one book to another. The authors I read made their way into my writing in one way or another. From Harry Potter came my desire to use magic in my writing. From Percy Jackson came my desire to dive deeper into mythology and build a world filled with myths and mythical creatures. Before that, from Rainbow Magic came my very first magical creature. I learned how to give my characters distinct voices and learned how to build immersive worlds.

Eventually, I understood what I wanted my own writing to do. I wanted to give readers a way to escape from the world around them. At the same time, I write to ground myself. Fantasy and fiction allow me to enter worlds I love while giving me something solid to hold on to. They remind me that it is possible to create worlds that are not bound by the same rules as our own. To me, fiction is not an absence of reality. It’s a place where I can create something that did not exist before and, in doing so, leave something permanent behind.

I became especially interested in worlds that were both familiar and unfamiliar. I wanted to set impossible things against places that readers already recognized, because the contrast makes magic feel closer. If something extraordinary can happen in a world that looks like ours, perhaps the reader begins to wonder whether there might be something extraordinary hiding in their own world too.  I think this is why Harry Potter and Percy Jackson are so successful. Their worlds ask readers to believe in magic and invite readers to imagine that this magic could exist alongside the ordinary.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the world was locked down and so much of life had moved indoors, I took my first steps into serious long-form writing. I began researching the world I wanted to build and the characters I wanted to create. I started writing in a time where I was watching supernatural TV shows, like The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. I wanted to create a world like that. Here, the real world could exist right next to the magical and no one but a select few would even know. At the same time, I was rereading Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which led to my interest in mythology. These led to the creation of The Werewolves of Brooklyn.

As I walked through the gates of MCC, a college – which according to the lore – was built in the middle of a dense scrub jungle and forest, I found an irreplaceable mentor in Dr. Samuel Rufus. One day, he walked into class and told us a story about a past student of his who told him that he wanted to publish a book. Dr. Rufus asked this student to write consistently and send him chapters as they were finished. He then directed this student towards a self-publishing platform and sponsored the process as well. As he spoke, I thought about my own manuscript, lying in a dusty corner of my cupboard. Right after class, I rushed up to him and told him I had a manuscript that I wanted published. He immediately agreed to help me and told me to send him a finished copy.

I threw myself into editing and a few weeks later, this 18-year-old girl had her finished manuscript in hand. I took it to my professor who showed me how to work Notion Press, a self-publishing platform. In July of 2024, The Werewolves of Brooklyn: Siege of the Dokkalfar was released. It was listed on Amazon and Flipkart.

Finding it there felt surreal. The book I had written as a teenager had somehow found its way back to the bookstore that had been part of my childhood. It felt like a full-circle moment, as though I was giving something back to the community that had helped raise me as a reader.

A few months later, my mom told me that she saw my books on the social media profile of a local library. That was surprising and exhilarating at the same time. I immediately had to rush to the library and see them for myself. My books were sitting on a shelf within reach of a child. Anyone could walk over, pick one up, and begin reading. There was something deeply moving about that. I had started writing because books had given me worlds to disappear into as a child. Now, one of my own books was sitting on a library shelf, waiting to do the same for someone else.

Of course, there have been times when I have lost confidence in my writing. I have wondered whether it was something I should continue or whether I should quit. Whenever I doubted myself, I think back to when a teacher told me that she had given her young son a copy of my book and that he enjoyed it. I had a fan and that knowledge kept me going.

Writing has also taught me things I never expected it to. I used to think of it primarily as an escape from reality, but creating a new world made me understand how imaginative I could be. It taught me structure, planning, patience, and discipline. A novel cannot be written in a single burst of inspiration. It requires months of planning, rewriting, and showing up even when inspiration is nowhere to be found. I had to learn to set aside time to write every day. Those habits eventually found their way into my academic writing as well.

As a writer, there is one question I often return to: why are we so drawn to stories that take the familiar world and make it strange? To answer that, I’d go back to my thought about the impossible becoming possible. When we read about something magical happening in a place we recognize, we begin to look at our own surroundings differently. Stories can make us look at the world with the curiosity we had as children, when almost anything seemed possible.

I write fantasy to create such worlds. I love the idea that someone might be having a better day because of my book or because my writing gives them hope. I want readers to escape into my worlds, fall in love with my characters, and return to their own lives carrying something back with them. When they return to the real world after reading my book, I hope they find the world a little more magical.

When I was younger, I thought I was destined to be a writer because of my name. That idea still makes me smile, but my reason for writing has evolved far beyond it. Having grown up looking for magic around me, I believe I can craft it well. When someone reads my writing, I want them to forget where they are. I want them to love my characters and find comfort. I want them to close the book and see magic in the world around them.

If I were to stop writing one day, I think I would feel as though I had lost my most important means of communication. I would have nowhere to put the thoughts I cannot say aloud, nowhere to build the worlds I still want to visit, and nowhere to run when reality becomes too loud. The little girl who wrote The Three Little Fish still lives in everything I write. I may have begun my journey because I thought writing was my destiny, but I continue to choose it every day. And perhaps that is the real reason I write: to make the world, for myself and for someone else, a little more magical.