Magic in Mystery—D.M.K. Ruby

When two of my nieces were young, I wrote a few stories for them featuring a pair of adventurers solving mysteries and hunting monsters. My six-year-old niece told me she preferred when the sasquatch remained a sasquatch, and not a guy dressed up as a mascot in the Chinook Centre Mall. Or the giant bear chasing them in Kananaskis Park was a real giant bear and not a couple of teenagers trying to scare kids.

When I read your blog, A. T. Bennett, it inspired me to think of ways of redirecting my rational, science brain and allowing for magic to remain magical, not be explained away. I’ve been thinking a lot about your line, “Superstition, the power of personal or community belief, is not something to discount in your creative endeavours.”

 You know I love a good cozy, a murder in a tidy village, or in a bakery, or a bookshop. I realized a lot of the time; superstition often makes an appearance. I learned this week while admiring another woman’s ring which turned out to be a blue opal, that DeBeers began circulating the rumour that opals were bad luck because customers were drifting from diamonds to opals. Interesting, but turns out not to be true. A brief internet search reveals that opals fell out of favour in Victorian times for various reasons, long before DeBeers. But it did serve to make me think about the power of perceived magic.

Can I write a story where I allow the magic to remain magical and resist the overwhelming urge to create a rational explanation? I don’t know, but it feels like you’ve set a fascinating challenge for me that may yield interesting results. I will keep you posted!