Interview with Lindsay Buroker, Author of Mind Over Magic (A Witch in Wolf Wood Book 1)

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write Mind Over Magic?

I’ve always loved house hunting and exploring quirky old houses. Even as a kid, I got super excited whenever the family moved and we had to find a new place. I wanted to explore every house with my parents and find all the nooks and crannies (if only secret doors and hidden passageways had been more common). I also loved the idea of inheriting an old house…

Sadly, that’s never happened to me.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t let it happen to my characters and live vicariously through them. For Morgen Keller, inheriting her grandmother’s old farmhouse is how the story starts.

To Morgen’s surprise, it’s full of witch paraphernalia. It turns out Grandma was a witch and had a werewolf for a roommate. What can I say? These things happen.  

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of Mind Over Magic, what would they be?

My werewolf is a dour, grouchy grump who’s lost his family and a lot of pack mates, so I’ll give him the nicely depressing Cold Missouri Waters by Cry Cry Cry.

Morgen falls for songs with animals in them (in the divorce, she let her husband have the house so that she could keep her best dog bud Lucky), so she’ll go for a song about dog romance. Blake Shelton’s Ol’ Red. (There might be people and something about a prison break in that song too, but she mostly remembers the dog romance.)  

If you had to write a blurb for the last book you read, what would it say?

Uhm, the last book I read was Dividends Don’t Lie by Geraldine Weiss. It’s on investing, and I don’t think I can write a blurb that makes that subject sound super exciting. Or even vaguely exciting.

It is by a super successful female investor, so that’s pretty cool. She originally tried to get a job as a stockbroker or analyst but was turned away because obviously women couldn’t be successful in that field. She eventually started an investing newsletter, signed the letters as G. Weiss, and became well known because her subscribers followed her advice and did well in the markets. It was fifteen years before she appeared in a television interview, and her subscribers learned she was a woman. Surprise!

(It was easier to keep secrets like that in the 60s and 70s.)

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I like a lot of sub-genres of fantasy and science fiction. Sci-fi romance may be my favorite to read, especially the space opera kind of stuff like Star Wars and Firefly. I’ve written some sci-fi romance under a pen name, but they’re a little naughtier than my LB stuff, haha.

Do you have any quirky writing habits? Where did you write Mind Over Magic? 

My Herman Miller Aeron chair is one of the more expensive pieces of furniture in my house, and I invested in it because it’s good for ergonomics. But… I tend to slump off to the side and sit in it with my leg draped over the armrest. So, uh, ergonomics fail.

I also write from bed, often with a dog draped over my lap (occasionally my laptop). Another ergonomics fail. But hey, that’s where most of Mind Over Magic happened.  

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

As all good career advice does, mine comes from a song:

“Yo, I don’t rap so millions of people will like me;
I rap ’cause there’s millions of people just like me.”  

– Just Being Me by NF

Lindsay Buroker is the author of the new book Mind Over Magic (A Witch in Wolf Wood Book 1)

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