Hello, I'm Victoria from BiblioLifestyle, and you're listening to the Reader's Couch Podcast, the show that will help you bridge the gap between living a full and busy life to one where you're reading, learning new things, and having fun.
But today on the couch, I'm so excited to have author C.M.Wagner to talk about her novel, The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society.The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is a cozy fantasy mystery where we meet a librarian named Sherry.
who has a knack for solving murders in her quaint village.However, when the body count rises and her cat becomes possessed by an ancient demon, Sherry suspects supernatural forces are at play.
With the help of a new priest and friends who form the Demon Hunting Society, she embarks on a mission to uncover the truth and protect her community. So readers, you can expect a delightful mix of humor, mystery, and the supernatural.
But before we get into the episode, please subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, leave a five-star rating, and write me a review if you love the show.Thanks in advance, and now on to the episode with author C.M.Wagner.
Hi readers, welcome again to the Reader's Couch.I'm your host, Victoria Wood.And here on the couch with me to talk about the Village Library Demon Hunting Society is author C.M.Wagner.Hi Caitlin, welcome to the Reader's Couch.
Hi, it's great to be here, I'm excited. Yay!I'm super excited because you gave us a wonderful, cozy, magical read.The Village Library Demon Hunting Society.
But before we even get into it, how are you feeling now that you have your third novel out there in the world and readers can go to the bookstore and go to the library and get their hands on a copy?
Technically, I think we're not out until September 24th.So there's still time to put in your pre-orders and go to your library and ask for a copy.But I'm super excited.I'm really happy.
I think people, something about this one sort of resonates with people, like the little bit of cozy, little bit of spooky.I'm really excited that it's coming out in the fall.So hopefully it'll be something that people can get cuddled up with.
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing.This is a perfect fall time read.So yes, perfect timing on the part of the publisher.
But for our listeners who are not familiar, they never heard of the Village Library Demon Hunting Society, tell us all about it.What's your elevator pitch?Essentially, what can readers expect when they pick up a copy?
So my elevator pitch has been, it's Murder, She Wrote meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.A cozy mystery of a pretty traditional type that slowly goes more and more unhinged as you get deeper into the story.
The backstory of this was that during the deepest part of the pandemic, when we were all stuck in our houses, I started binge watching Murder, She Wrote on streaming.And as I watched more and more, it started to occur to me.
a little bit like one of the things that's so ridiculous about cozy mysteries is that all of these terrible crimes are happening in this like lovely little village or to this nice little lady and no one seems to comment on it.
So I decided to use my fantasy novelist brain to think like what what could be causing this and the explanation I came up with was that it's demon problems.So that's what's going on in this book.
Yes, I like that twist with the demon problems for sure.Let's talk about our main character, Sherry.Sherry moved upstate.She found this quaint little town.
She's a town librarian, but now she's also a sleuth and a mystery investigator and murder investigator as well.
Now she moves to this place and she's solving mysteries but she's noticing that a high number of people are dying or stuff's happening and it's quite unusual.No one thinks anything of it.
She's the only person who is, I guess you could say, aware of what is going on or paying attention or has an interest in it.So tell us a bit about Sherry and who she is and how she got herself in this situation.
I think Sherry in some ways is a little bit like the reader avatar in the book, because she's read the books, she understands the genre.
And so she's a little bit more capable of picking up on the fact that there's something going on weird narratively inside the universe that she's living in.I think she's an interesting person.She's never been the protagonist of her own life.
And so when she moves up to Winesap and she gets this job as a librarian and she starts solving mysteries, I think at first, It's really great.It's really exciting.She's enjoying getting to be the star of the show.
So it takes her a little bit to really get a handle on hold on a second.This actually isn't this isn't very nice.All these people getting murdered.
Yes absolutely and I love that for her that she's a person who's paying attention and I'm really excited to see her come into her own.That's really how I was feeling as I was reading throughout.
Now it's important to mention I feel that something happens that really pushes Sherry to dig deeper. So it's not a spoiler to say her boyfriend is killed and she's investigating.
And again, people in the community, they are pushing her to investigate, but also at the same time, it's almost like they don't have a care in the world. She also has a cat, which I found has a very interesting name.
The poor cat also seems to be possessed.Tell us about the boyfriend dying.Tell us about the cat and how this really pushes her to say, okay, now I have to investigate.And she also gets help from the town's priest.Tell us about that.
Yeah, like the three men in her life throughout the course of the book are her boyfriend, Alan, Father Barry, the new parish priest, and her cat, Lord Thomas Cromwell, who Sherry named because she thought it would be a funny thing to name a cat after she watched A Man for All Seasons.
And it really comes back to bite her.It was a very poor choice on her part. Um, but yes, you know, she was doing her little thing, enjoying doing the murder mysteries.
And as one of the genre conventions we're familiar with is that you're the people who are close to the lead and the cozy mystery are never the people who actually get killed.And also Sherry's really. personally thrown for a loop.She's really upset.
She's really grieving for Alan.So that's the sort of thing that kicks off her understanding that, wait a second, A, this isn't fun anymore.And B, something isn't quite right.And so then also about that same time, her cat
starts chatting to her in a very bad British accent with very bad fake tutor dialogue, insisting that he is the spirit of Lord Thomas Cromwell and the body of her cat.
When he does, he gives her a little bit of help along the way, as does Father Barry, who really doesn't want to be involved at all.He didn't go to the exorcism seminar.He doesn't know what he's doing with the demons, but he will do his best.
Yes, he will.He will.And I love seeing this trio, so to say, come together.So it's fair to say you're going to get the cozy mystery in here.You're going to get a bit of magical, fantastical elements.We have demon possession.
We also have some exorcism.But the one thing I think I enjoyed and it really helped me to escape, for lack of a better word.It's just a humor.This is so light and fun.
There's also friendships in this story, which I love seeing that kind of being fleshed out as well.I'm curious, one, who was your favorite character to write and discover along the way?Who do you want readers to keep an eye out for?
and no you can't say sherry but also what inspired you to tell this story outside of the murder she wrote binge during the pandemic lord thomas cromwell the possessed cat just made i he i think started out as a much less important character and then just
He made me laugh writing the dialogue and other people reading the drafts weren't really enjoying him too.So he became more of a feature player.And poor anxious Father Barry is fun too.
He's just in so far over his head that also was quite fun to write.And there's a sort of a twist character.The relatively wicked Todd was also fun to write when he shows up. What else inspired the book?
I would say I always, in all of my books, enjoy thinking about the idea of what makes a protagonist, like who gets to be the protagonist, what makes someone important enough to have a story about them.
And I like playing with the idea of who and what gets to go to the front of the storyline and also playing with the sort of with the genre itself, with the conventions of storytelling and genre and like messing around with what you expect to happen in a book versus like things that could happen if we didn't have those expectations about how stories work.
So all that stuff was in there.
Wow, that's awesome.So I wanna go into, let me say that again.So I wanna talk about your writing life a bit because I only discovered after reading the Village Library Demon Hunting Society that you have two other books.
You have Unnatural Magic and The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry.Share a brief summary about each book and yeah, let's just start with that.Tell us about each of the books.
Also, Unnatural Magic is my first book.The two of them are actually, they're set in the same universe, but you can read either of them as a standalone or they can go in either order.It doesn't really matter.
But Unnatural Magic is the story of three distinct characters.There's a young woman
wants to become to go to wizard school to become a wizard, which in this universe is a very kind of academic discipline when she's very good at math, which is what makes her suited for that career path.
There is a young man in his early 20s, who was a very reluctant soldier and desserts.And there's a troll named Syrah, who is just herself.She's a half troll.She doesn't really fit in with her community she grew up in.She feels a little bit like she's
doesn't really have a place in her society.She grew up and she's bumming around and trying to figure out her place in the world.
And the three of them get wrapped up accidentally in figuring out where, who the identity of essentially a serial killer who's killing trolls across a couple of different countries.So that's the first one.
And my second one, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is about a woman named Deli
who is very down her luck, she grew up with in and out of homelessness, her mom has some issues with addiction, and Delhi is flat broke and she comes across a want ad for a bodyguard for a wealthy young lady and so she decides to take the job and she gets sucked into a whole bunch of high kind of more
titled fancy rich people hijinks that she has to get herself out of.So that's basically it.That's the pitch for those two.
We have exciting reads to look forward to.So if you're like me and you didn't read the previous two books, now you have something.And they sound perfect for fall as well.I love this.So they're definitely right on time for the season.
So you have Unnatural Magic and The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry. Okay, what would you say is the similarity but also the differences between your books?
I know you said on Natural Magic and The Lady's Guide to Wizardry is set in the same universe and The Village Library Demon Hunting Society is a bit different but what would you say is the common thread throughout all these three books that readers can look forward to?
I think that the three, there are a few different things that would be in common across all the things I write.I was saying before, like unusual protagonists, like people who you wouldn't necessarily imagine as the star of a book.
A lot of my protagonists are women.I really like female characters and female characters have a lot of other female friends that they're hanging out with and bouncing off of. humor, I think.
I try to really work in some jokes and wordplay and fun with language in all of my books.
And in the second two, in Ruthless Lady's Guide and the Village Library Demon Hunting Society, each have a kind of possessed animal friend, which was not really intentional, but it was fun.
And people in the Ruthless Lady's Guide, it's a dead reanimated skeleton mouse named Buttons.So that's a commonality between those two.
Yeah.Awesome.Awesome.So are you working on any other projects?Again, we just gave readers three books of yours that they can read, but are you working on anything else?Anything to look forward to?
I am.I'm currently working on a fourth novel, which will also be for Penguin Ace.It's going to be, again, the departure from the other three.
It's a fantasy again, but in a completely different universe and with, hopefully, some very fun kind of multiverse, universe-hopping shenanigans, and also, hopefully, a good love story.
My first two books and this one all have some romance plotline in them, which is fun to write and which I hope people enjoy reading.
And I've also written a little novella that I'm looking for a home for, which is much more of like a light comedy and a graphic novel script, which I'm kicking around.So a lot of stuff going on at the same time.
Yes you sound like quite the busy bee but needless to say we have work to look forward to.You're working on stuff so yes we should definitely keep our eyes out.Okay I want to get into your reading life a bit.
Share with our listeners the last book or books that you finished reading that you'd now recommend.
Oh man okay so this one has a very I love reading non-fiction I think especially as a fantasy novelist it's really you It's good minds for material reading, especially like I love history.
And I read a book called of the gods, I believe is the name of it.And it's about. the, I guess, for many hundreds, thousands of years, no one knew where the source of the White Nile was.And it's about these horrible Englishmen who are there.
They're both really unpleasant characters.They're very interesting, interesting, awful men.
And an African man who was their guide, these three figures who were trying to get to the White Nile and the two Englishmen, all their horrible like middle school girl backstabbing and fighting and stuff like that.
But it's a really fascinating story.And I found out where that line Dr. Livingston, I presume I never knew where that came from, but I learned it from this book.So I definitely recommend that if you're interested in history at all.
It's kind of that sounds very interesting.
Yeah, it's a strange story.Definitely one of those stranger than fiction kind of ones, but would recommend that one.
Yes, that sounds amazing.It sounds like a great adventure.I would for sure go down that rabbit hole. What was your favorite childhood book that you can remember?
No, that's a horror.I was a huge reader as a kid.So many choices.I loved the Red Wall books.I don't know if anyone else remembers those, but it was like little forest animals who had adventures.
I loved, gosh, all the classics, like A Secret Garden and A Little Princess, all that sort of stuff.Diana Wynne-Jones was an author I loved.Tamara Pierce.There's just tons and tons, so it's very hard to pick just one.
Yes, I know.It can be really hard.I struggle trying to pick a childhood favorite as well.But on the show, we also love indie bookstores.Share with our listeners some of your favorite local indies.
Oh, OK.So I live in Albany, New York.There's a little used bookstore, which is just like the most magical little place.It's very small, but every book in there is a book you want to read that whoever's doing the curating there is wonderful.
It's called Dovin Hudson. There's a book in Western Massachusetts called The Book Mill, which is literally it's in this old mill, like over water, and it's huge.
And you can just wander around in there for ages and find these giant art books and weird, rare editions.Very cool.There's so many in Troy, New York, which is very near here.We have, oh gosh, there's a couple of them.
One of them is called The Book House, but they're all great.There's so many.
Yes, lots of bookstores just like the books, so it's really hard to pick as well.But getting back to your novel, The Village Library Demon Hunting Society, For me, this was a really cozy read.
Again, like I said, you get the supernatural bits, you get the murder mystery, cozy, of course, but I love the friendships and I just love seeing the characters develop throughout.Love the setting too.
What are you hoping for in an ideal world that readers might think or feel or want to call their friend and tell them about your book in an ideal world?What are you hoping for?
Oh man, I'm hoping that people who love the genre love this.I hope that people who have spent years reading cozies or also maybe are fantasy fans read this and are like, this is so much fun.
Like it just feels like a fun little love letter to the genre.I hope that they're picking up the little references and jokes.
And then it's just like a great little treat for people who already love the genre, but maybe are so familiar with it that this comes as a kind of a fun little twist.
There's some humor and surprise delivered along with a solid mystery too, which I'm hoping that the people when they read it will be surprised by the ending.They won't know, oh, I know who did it from the second page.
Well, I love this one.I'm a cozy fan and I love just these heartwarming reads for sure.I love a little mystery.I love a twist.And I appreciated the supernatural elements and the demons and having to do possibly exorcism.It was fun.I love the ride.
So thank you, Caitlin.Thanks for coming on the show and speaking with me.This has been fun.Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to the Reader's Couch Podcast.
Please subscribe to the show, share it with a friend, and take a few seconds to leave a rating and review.Until next time, stay lounging, stay reading, and whenever you're in doubt, go straight to your local bookstore or library.
Thanks again for listening and happy reading.
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