Since the Brontë sisters brought us Heathcliff and Rochester, Gothic lovers everywhere developed a taste for brooding romantic heroes, moody backdrops, and an extra dose of danger and intrigue. The modern romantasy craze has capitalized on this excitement, and perhaps no other author captures the Gothic elements better than Kaylie Smith! Read on to hear all about her Wicked Games series, including the newly released title, Enchantra.
Trigger Warning: This article contains mentions of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Please exercise personal care while reading.
About the Author
Kaylie Smith is a writer and lover of all things magical and fantasy. She grew up in Louisiana, where she frequently haunted bookstores and practiced her writing craft. When she isn’t writing or reading, she can be found at home with all of her Australian Shepherds or fussing over her houseplants.
Thank you, Kaylie, let’s get started!
For readers unfamiliar with it, can you give an elevator pitch for the Wicked Games series?
Phantasma follows necromancer Ophelia Grimm as she enters a haunted house competition to rescue her sister, Genevieve, and makes a bargain with a mysterious phantom in order to survive the competition’s hellish trials. Enchantra follows Genevieve as she accepts a magic invitation to an opulent palace in the Italian countryside and ends up trapped in a game of deadly hide and seek amongst seven siblings, and finds herself in a marriage of convenience with one of the siblings in order to survive the game.
What inspired you to start writing? Did growing up in the haunting atmosphere of New Orleans have an influence on your writing journey?
I was a huge reader growing up, and when I was old enough to start joining fandom spaces for my favorite books and authors, I knew it was my dream to create something similar! New Orleans absolutely influenced my fascination with ghosts and real-life magic.
What about Louisiana makes it the perfect backdrop for your Gothic novels?
The architecture, the perfect gloomy days, the underlying paranormal energy of New Orleans…it always has just felt like a place where something magical could be possible, and I love that.
Can you describe your process for creating the terrifying trials in Phantasma? Can we expect something similar in Enchantra?
I spent a lot of time revisiting my notes on Dante’s Inferno and brainstorming games that would fit the themes of each circle of Hell. There was a lot of careful planning that went into what I needed each game to do to push Ophelia’s growth and her alliance with Blackwell, so it was honestly a lot of trial and error until the stakes were as high as I was aiming for!
Enchantra’s game is a little different because the overall rules of the game are the same for the entire book, but there are tiny twists that change things up for each round, and those were a lot of fun to come up with!
In the transition from writing young adult to new adult, what themes were you excited to explore in your Wicked Games series that you couldn’t before?
I think just the darker, grittier side of things. When you become an adult, there’s a veil of innocence that’s pulled back in a lot of areas of life (parental figures, responsibility, your own self), and I think it can be very disenchanting, and I love being able to explore that in a more graphic way. As well as the very dark sides of mental health issues that border on psychological horror sometimes…that was certainly an area I knew I wanted more freedom to explore.
You wrote an author’s note on OCD at the end of Phantasma, talking about your experiences with it and the misconception that it just concerns being overly neat. How did you ensure Ophelia’s story would challenge that narrative and be as representative as possible, given that OCD affects people in different ways?
I truly just wrote my own experience with the disorder as authentically as I possibly could. I was diagnosed with OCD very early on, and every single thing that Ophelia goes through is something I physically and mentally have experienced myself. Even then, I trimmed some of her symptoms back to benefit the storytelling process. The fact is that there is no universal experience for anything, but writing something vulnerable and authentic has seemed to resonate with so many readers who experience OCD, even if our disorder manifests differently from one another.
Similar to Ophelia’s OCD in Phantasma, is there an element of Genevieve’s lived experience that you wanted to explore and shed light on in Enchantra?
Genevieve deals with a lot of feeling lost within her own family and trying to find herself, and that’s certainly something I think others can find relatable. She’s also plus-size (like me!), but it was really important to me that this aspect of her character was just a fact and not an insecurity or her entire identity.
If you were forced to choose between playing Phantasma and Enchantra, which would you choose and why?
Enchantra for sure! I think I’d be pretty good at hide and seek — especially if I had a hot wraith like Rowin watching my back. I think I would have passed out just stepping inside of Phantasma haha.
What aspects of Gothic influences captivate you and inspire you to infuse them into your stories?
Just the sheer drama of the aesthetics and literary themes! The architectural features, the fashion…and then there’s the metaphorical aspects of the topics of life and death, as well as monsters that are physical manifestations of human desires and sins. I just find the drama of it all so intriguing.
If you are at liberty to discuss it, what’s next on your creative to-do list? Do you have another story in the works?
I am currently working on Wicked Games 3 as well as a secret project I haven’t announced yet…and I am SO excited for both. Wicked Games 3 is already my favorite of the series, and I’m so excited to reveal more about it later this year!
A big thank you to Kaylie for sharing her Gothic and intriguing world with us! Be sure to purchase the first two Wicked Games books, and keep an eye out for the upcoming third novel. If it’s anything like the first two, we know you won’t want to miss it!
Be sure to follow Kaylie on her socials!
Click here to read about another author who writes captivating romances with fantastical elements.
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