Unlike with Lost by Magic and Lucky by Magic, this book was the first book I wrote completely during my free periods at work. By time I finished the first draft of Lucky by Magic, it was right before I went back to work full time, and left me no time to start writing Lured by Magic. So, with no other choice, I did what I could in the forty minutes I had each day (minus the days I had classes scheduled to come in during my free periods).
As a result, this book took me longer to write the first draft than the other two. I think I started it in September 2022, and didn’t finish until about halfway through November 2022. But it was done, and finishing it let a huge weight off of my shoulders.
Originally, the third book in the Lost by Magic series was going to tell the legend of the Woman in White, but I couldn’t find a good enough way to tie it in with the way I needed to wrap up the Zanabar three-book story arc. So I shifted gears and used another idea I had had: Hecate.
Throughout the series I had made a point to show how even though Frankie was a powerful witch, he is still from a generation of magic where time travel isn’t so commonplace. That leads him to be at the mercy of Hecate and Zanabar to get back home to his daughters, which puts him at a moral crossroads, where he has to decide to return to his daughters, or be a good witch and do what he needs to in order to make sure that evil does not run amuck in the past.
Another thing I was excited to tell was the idea of Frankie communicating with someone from 1984 through notes left behind. A long time ago I had watched a movie that involved time travel, where the character had gone back in time (maybe only a week or so) and left notes for himself to find in the future and, based on those notes, he changed the future with the small acts he made in the past. I wish I could remember what movie it was, but it was something like he cut himself in the past, only to show his future self that he was who he said he was and, as the future self read the note, he saw a scar form on his arm.
Anyway, it was a cool concept and one that I wanted to implement in this book, but I also wanted to show Eddie struggling with the note that he found from Frankie and trying to determine if he should help his friend and wrapping his head about the fact that Frankie was into some occult stuff. Again, this being 1984 when the “future” part of this book takes place, and the fear of cults and satanism was running rampant throughout the country.
Originally, I wanted to have Frankie communicate with Eddie throughout the book, much like the movie I (barely) remembered, but it didn’t quite fit in with the story, so I scrapped that idea.
One of the things I did like doing with Eddie’s storyline, though, was showing yet another person talking to Samantha and Kathy and asking about Frankie’s whereabouts. Through that, we get to see how Samantha and Kathy handled their father’s disappearance from afar. It’s a nice contradiction to the Coven series, where the two of them are the main characters.
If only Samantha and Kathy had paid more attention or dug into the questions being asked about their father, maybe they could’ve found a way to bring him back to their time and restored what they had missed. Of course, as we learn in the Coven series, the girls are struggling to hold their own as instant-adults, with Samantha working all the time to keep the house, all while going to college, and Kathy trying to finish her senior year of high school, while also working to pay the bills. Things teenagers shouldn’t ever have to face, but that was their reality.
I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much I did writing it! If you did, please leave a review online to let other readers know what you thought of it! Every review helps add social credit to my books, so even a simply star rating or on-line review helps!
Thanks for reading!