BREAKING IN
Ciannon Smart
Witches Steeped in Gold
(YA fantasy, April, HarperTeen)
“Two witches from rival orders unite in order to take down a mutual, powerful enemy.”
England. was my first foray into YA fantasy. I’d written dystopias, but was the first story where everything I loved, as opposed to what was trending, clicked. I wanted witches in a non-Western world, who were unreliable narrators; a fraught setting that felt like a character, and a romance with a slow, painful burn. A family trip to Jamaica 15 years ago inspired . It didn’t take me that long to write the book, just that long to realize the stories I wanted to read were in short supply, so I decided to write them instead. There were two years from when the idea first sparked—taboo magic, a world I’m represented by Suzie Townsend, but it was my first agent, Taylor Haggerty, who sold the book in 2018. We met through querying. She was one of a small list of agents I researched and sent emails to. Query Tracker and Publishers Marketplace are two resources I recommend for finding agents. For the longest time, writing was incredibly solitary for me. It occupied stolen moments between work, sleep, and other responsibilities. Finding a community in the YA space online has been a whirlwind of activity and excitement. I was tenacious. wasn’t the first book I wrote, but it was the best at the time. To get there, I read craft books, sought advice from those more experience than me via Pitch Wars, participated in agent one-to-ones, ventured into the Twitter hellscape to find critique partners and beta readers. I didn’t give up. I’m a believer in lessons, not regrets. That being said, I would have read craft books earlier. There’s a difference between being a great writer and a great storyteller. Reading helps with both, but craft books and methodology will really help with the latter. In the YA space, I’m working on something more speculative, though it features characters who would get on well with Ira and Jazmyne from . And by “get on well with,” I mean that none of them would put their backs to one other. I’m also working on the first book in a MG contemporary fantasy series that releases next year.
