Kelly's Bookworm Review Blog: Alchemy of Secrets: Meet the Author

I received a newsletter from Flatiron Books that I HAD to share! This book looks fascinating and I can hardly wait to read it! The interview with the author is particularly interesting. I hope you agree. Check out the Macmillan website for additional details!

Meet the Author

Get to know more about Stephanie Garber’s adult debut, Alchemy of Secrets, and her writing process!

Flatiron Books: What inspired you to write Alchemy of Secrets?

Stephanie Garber: Alchemy of Secrets begins with a class called Folklore 517, where a woman known only as the Professor teaches a series of urban myths and legends that my main character is convinced are true. These legends were a huge inspiration for this story. But Alchemy of Secrets was also inspired by so many of the things that I find fascinating—secret societies, old Hollywood, the paranormal, treasure hunts full of puzzles, dark academia, and star-crossed lovers.

FB: What kind of research did you do?

SG: As I mentioned, there’s a class in Alchemy of Secretscalled Folklore 517: Local Legends and Urban Myths. One of the myths taught in this class is about the devil. According to this myth, there are a number of haunted hotel bars in Los Angeles, and there is one that the devil is said to frequent because he likes their sidecar. And if you can manage to find this bar and then buy the devil a sidecar he’ll give you one of his business cards, which you can then use to set up a meeting and make a deal with the devil.

After hearing this myth, my main character and her friends decide they are going to go to every hotel bar in Los Angeles in search of the devil. This was something I felt as if I needed to do, too. I wanted to truly put myself in my main character’s shoes and I really wanted to figure out which bar I thought the devil would frequent.

So, when I took my first research trip to Los Angeles, I did just that—I went to hotel bar after hotel bar in an attempt to figure out which one felt like the bar from the myth. But hotels weren’t the only places I visited during that first trip.

My hope with Alchemy of Secrets is that readers who pick up the book will wonder just how much of the story is real and how much of it is made up. To do this, I wanted to make the book feel as real as possible, so I visited a number of the big iconic locations like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the Hollywood Reservoir, and the old LA Zoo. But I also just spent a lot of time wandering around to see what bits of magic I could find.

FB: What can readers expect from Alchemy of Secrets?

SG: The pacing is don’t-blink-or-you-might-miss-it, everyone is lying, no one is who they say, the urban myths might be real magic, and characters are kissing people that they shouldn’t.

FB: What was your favorite part about writing Alchemy of Secrets?

SG: There are a number of ways I could answer this, I could talk about how fun it was to experiment with chapters in second person. I could talk about how I smiled the entire time I wrote excerpts of the screenplay. I could talk about the ending. Or I could talk about the dedication, which is only about two lines, but writing those lines meant more to me than I can express in words.

FB: What book are you reading right now?

SG: Earlier this year I started a book club with a friend. We read across genres and our book club pick for this month is Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson and it is utterly delightful!

FB: Where do you do your best writing?

SG: I don’t have a specific place where I write. I sort of write anywhere and everywhere—airplanes, counter tops, sitting on the floor of my living room. It’s not so much a matter of where I do my best but how. I find that the work I feel best about usually happens anytime I can shut off my email and the internet and go somewhere without any distractions.