For my first blog post, I’m glad to announce that my first Venus King Mysteries book Apprentice Witch is out now!
Since this is both a debut novel and a new blog, I thought I should give some background for how I came up with the idea for the series and wrote it.
The start of what would eventually become the Venus King Mysteries series came all the way back in 2019, when I was working a terrible low-paying job at Tokmanni (the Finnish equivelant of Target). Stacking shelves and getting yelled at by customers in a language I still barely understood at that point wasn’t exactly inspiring. But as usually happens in these situations, my imagination started running wild to make it at least a little more bearable.
I started coming up with ideas for a mystery series about a young woman working a similar retail job and stumbling upon a mystery. I still don’t know where the name Venus King came from. I probably thought it sounded whimsical and made the main character stand out. Whenever a manager gave me too much work or a customer was rude to me, I would turn them into suspects in my story. In the end, the culprit would end up being the job coach who landed me that job in the first place.
The job came to an end and I didn’t think much more about the Venus King story for a few years. I focused on other things like learning Finnish, finding a better job, and improving my writing.
In about 2023 I was randomly browsing through Amazon categories just to see what was available and I came upon the witch and wizard mystery category. That was intriguing. I never knew there was a whole sub-genre of supernatural mysteries. After binge-reading a few series by the likes of C.J. Archer and Annabel Chase, I was hooked. Best of all, I realised it was something I wanted to write as well.
That was when I mentally resurrected the Venus King series, which had been lingering in the back of my mind and as notes on my harddrive for years. The current version ended up drastically different than the one I initially wrote when I was bored and frustrated. I cut out most of the comedy elements (although some remain) and Venus’ character changed almost entierly. I also switched it from a regular mystery series and added supernatural elements.
The character of Venus is very much like myself and how I feel being a creator in my mid-thirties (although I am a writer and Venus is an artist) and how depressing it can feel to be stuck in a rut. Like me she is also very shy but has a natural curiosity for the world, plus an affinity for magic.
The setting of Cliffwood is a fictional island off the coast of Margate, my home town. I’ve always liked island and coastal settings so I incorperated some elements of the real life Margate into the story and also some fantasy elements which made it a sort of idealised version. I envision Cliffwood as the type of place I would like to live with old fashioned buildings, a tea shop, and plenty of natural surroundings and historical sites to visit. I also read up on a lot of local folklore and true crime stories to give me some ideas for the series, many of which have made their way into the series. Book 2, for instance, is loosely based upon a murder case I read about in True Crimes from the Past: Kent, which I was lucky enough to come across in a charity bookshop.
As much as I love witch mystery books and fantasy in general, there was one thing which slightly irritated me about them. In those stories, the protagonist always finds out that they have some secret magical heritage or hidden power that is unique to them. It’s not that I hate those stories. I have written fantasy stories like those in the past. I just wished to read a story where magic or special powers aren’t limited just to special people who were born with them. Just like in real life anybody can learn a skill if they put enough time and effort into it, I wanted a story where magic is the same. So I thought, why not just write that story myself?
That also gave me the idea for the series. There’s going to be some slight spoilers here, so come back and read this later if you want to read the book first. I’ve also had a long fascination with the idea of secret societies. A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of my favourite book and tv series, and one of my favourite parts is the mystery of the secret society. So that’s why I made the main villains of the series a secret magical society of witches who are spreading the belief that magic can only be used by certain special people and are trying to stop Venus from learning magic. Social commentary is also something I like to include in my writing, and I liked how this reflected the way real life hate groups and elitists think and operate.
And why did I include a curry loving house elf? No reason! I just thought it was funny.
Anyway, I hope that everybody who reads the Venus King series enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have at least 5 books planned in the series, plus a few spin-offs. I won’t give away any spoilers, but things are going to get very exciting!
J.A. Arundel 