Reena  McCarty is a lifelong Montanan who’s constantly looking for  the perfect  balance of hiking, camping, and impulse baking cakes. She  has a BA in  theater, a Master’s in Library Science, and somehow ended  up cooking for  a living and also for fun. When not writing, Reena can  often be found  wandering in the woods with her husband, admiring every  dog she sees.

Welcome to the Hive, Reena.

We’re so glad to have you here to chat about your debut release, The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains. Could you tell us a little bit about it? What can readers expect?

The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains follows Poppy, who was stolen by faeries from her family’s homestead in late-1800s Montana, when she was about five years old. She grew up Otherside, then got returned to the human world a hundred years after she left, give or take a few decades. In return for some basic education and papers, Poppy has to work as a negotiator for a company that sells faerie bargains to the rich. Unfortunately for her, things go wrong on a high stakes, off-the-books deal, and she has to find a way to fix it before it destroys her life. Even more unfortunately, doing so lands her neck deep in faerie politics and makes her confront the reality of the past she’s been determinedly looking at through rose-colored glasses. 

I had the pleasure of reading an early copy and I absolutely fell in love with our main protagonist, Poppy. She goes on quite the personal journey throughout the book, doesn’t she? How did you find crafting her character? 

Poppy isn’t someone who is very in touch with her emotions at the start of the book. It took me a couple of tries to figure her out–it wasn’t until I settled on “repressed anger” as her sort of base state that I really started to unlock her. She grew up never really being able to express or even feel her feelings, and her shifting views on both having feelings and what it means to be human in a world where not-human is seen as superior are really the core of her growth. At the same time, I really wanted her to be smart and determined to get through whatever horrors she’s facing, whether that be getting captured and imprisoned by faeries or working for an insurance company.

There are several key fae characters, such as Sloan, Elan and Theron, that Poppy has to deal with once she enters the Otherside. My personal favourite was Elan, I just adored his cheeky personality! Who was your favourite to write?

 Oh, Elan absolutely. I love all of my terrible children, but he is the sort of easy to write that I have to really keep in check–I love nothing more than writing pages of breezy dialogue, and if I’m not careful he really gets out of hand. 

Your worldbuilding is richly layered with the bureaucracy of Carter Lane in the human realm and the history and conflicts of the Otherside in the fae realm. Was the politics here something you had always planned as a significant aspect of the narrative or did this emerge through subsequent drafts? 

It was always part of it. There are specifics that sort of shifted, and some things I just sort of threw in at the beginning managed to be extremely useful at the end without my really planning on it, but the big political plot points were there more or less from the beginning.

In fact on your Instagram page you’ve said that this novel went through around six drafts before you let anyone see it. Could you tell us a little bit about how Faerie Bargains has evolved throughout your drafting and editing process? 

Ha, well, mostly it was just about me being very slow at figuring out what I was trying to do. A lot of those drafts were me going “ugh, well, it doesn’t work in third person, let’s try it in first” and then “ok, first works, but it should be in past tense, not present”. Horrible slogs like that. The very earliest draft had a different main character–she was a little bit younger and much more depressed, and she really wasn’t cut out to be a protagonist. I did a bunch of cutting and combining characters–there were several drafts where Poppy took her roommate (she doesn’t have one in the final version) with her when she goes back Otherside. At one point I had her getting into a big physical fight at the end (a bad idea that didn’t work at all). Also every character except Elan had different names in different drafts. A lot of the major plot beats were there pretty early on, but the circumstances around them were pretty wiggly. 

If you had to make a faerie bargain, what would you bargain for and is there anything you would give the fae in exchange? 

The real and correct answer here is “don’t do it, it’s a bad idea”. However, there is a bargain in an early chapter where a character wants to speak every language, and the specific phrasing of that one was something I worked out years before I started writing the book, just in case I ever met some sort of wish-granting entity. My real problem would be the trade–I wouldn’t be willing to do what that character does and give up my sense of taste, that’s for sure! 

Your cover, designed by Meg Shepherd, is just delightful! As I was reading your book I kept noticing little details from the artwork making sense to the narrative which was such fun! How involved in the process were you? Did Meg capture the aesthetic you had hoped for?

Isn’t it gorgeous?? I’m so thrilled with it! I loved the initial concept when I first saw it, and I got to see each draft as it was designed. My main contribution–and the thing that was most important to me–was that it have a very specific sense of place. I wanted it to look like Montana to the people who know what Montana looks like, and I asked that the plants on the cover all be things I can find when I go out hiking. I think Meg absolutely nailed it–I’m not a very visual person, and I’m totally in awe of people who can translate vibes into art like that. 

There’s a scene in your book where Poppy makes cinnamon French toast (yum!). So what’s your favourite French toast topping? And do you also share Poppy’s culinary skills? 

Is it awful if I admit I don’t really like french toast? If I’m eating it, I’ll go for some sort of berry–either fresh raspberries or a blueberry sauce–but I really don’t like sweet breakfasts (I’m sorry). I’m a pretty good cook–I’ve been working in kitchens for the majority of my adult life. I Poppy the same job because I like how cooking can be both a menial task that doesn’t get a lot of respect and also a respected creative art, depending.

As a debut author, which has been the most fun and/or the most nerve-wracking aspect of your journey to being published?  

The most fun has been getting to know fellow debuts (and reading their books!)–the community aspect has been very cool and really helpful for navigating this whole process. The most nerve-wracking thing is honestly just waiting to see if people like it/buy it/support it enough that I can keep doing this!

Can you tell us a little something about what we can expect next from you Reena? Will we be returning to Poppy’s journey in a sequel?

Yes! I like to think that the main plotlines of Tricky are wrapped up in a satisfying way, but there are definitely a few problems left for Poppy to deal with, and I am happy to say she’s stuck protagonisting once again in Book Two, which should be out in 2027. 

Are you planning anything fun to celebrate the release of The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains? Do you have any upcoming virtual events our readers may be interested in?

I’ve got a couple of local events, but nothing virtual planned right now. Maybe I should? 

Finally, what is the one thing you hope readers take away from your writing?

 I started writing Tricky before “AI” was even a thing, and it’s been really kind of horrifying to watch my book about how creativity is essential, human, and essentially human to be coming into being at the same time that massive companies are trying to convince us to turn that part of ourselves over to slop-extruding plagiarism machines. So I hope people come away with an appreciation for their own ability to imagine. And also maybe the desire to take a little nature walk. That’s nice too. 

Thank you so much for joining us today!

Thank you for having me!

The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains is out today from Orbit – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org