The Wycherleys | Teen Librarian

For the Kingdom. For the magic. And for love . . .

Seventeen-year-old Aurelia Wycherley is entering her debutante season as a witch. Aurelia should be excited about finding the perfect match to tether her magic to. But her magic is cursed – dark, dangerous, and not the kind that her peers want to match with – and, without a tether, she faces losing her magic completely.

But when Aurelia learns that enigmatic, aloof Jules, a member of arch enemy family the Nightlys, is searching for a way that a witch can keep their magic without tethering, she realises he may be her only hope. A forbidden alliance is formed . . . but as they navigate the Magical Season with its glamoured balls and perilous trials, they uncover dark forces that threaten their families and the magical world they live in.

Expect family secrets, generational curses, forbidden romance, gorgeous ballgowns, bribery, extortion, trespass, magic and kissing . . . lots of kissing.

Simon & Schuster

Treating you to a guest post from ex-Librarian Annaliese Avery about her fantastical new UKYA!

Wycherley Worldbuilding

Discovering the worlds of the stories that I am writing is one of my favourite aspects of writing. I write in quite an open and free way, I think of it as exploring, I set off into the story armed with very little details; sometimes I don’t even know the destination, but I will know a few things and I will follow those like trails in the wildness and see where the story leads. As I am navigating these tracks and pathways, I will start to discover the story around me either through the writing of the story itself or through the thinking that I do about the story – usually when I am not at my desk.

For The Wycherleys I knew quite a bit as I set off to write; I knew the basis for the magic system, and I knew the time period that I wanted to set the story in. Importantly I also had my main character Aurelia Wycherley and her brother Vaughn. I find it best to explore a story with a guide and my characters are always that for me – as I write about them they show me the world that they live in and I learn about it as the story progresses and grows.

About a year before I started writing The Wycherleys I had written a proposal for a middle grade story that had a pair of witches who could only perform magic when in close proximity to one another, although nothing came of that proposal, I thought the idea was a good one and it grew into the basis for the magic system in The Wycherleys.

By the time I sat down to start work on writing I knew that in this story world magic was in decline and unstable, and that when a witch received their magic they had a handful of years before it would fade away to nothing, unless they could find someone to tether their magic too, this would keep it in place but that tethering bond would last a lifetime. Finding a tether was paramount, finding the right tether was also important.

The alternate Regency time period for the story was there early on too. I knew I wanted to write a magical fantasy story with a romance to it, and one of my favourite romances is that of Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, and of course I had been watching Bridgerton and something about the debutante season and the season of the witch clicked together. I thought, what if when the debutante season finished the Season of the Witch began, with the debutantes of magic taking over London and making their way through the Sabbats of the wiccan wheel of the year as they attended balls and magical soirées all will exploring their power and the possible magical matches available to them.

I do remember at one point in the drafting stage I wrote “In this third age of magic …” and stopped as I realised if my characters were living in the third age of magic then there had been another two ages before them. I then had a lot of fun looking at key historical events and seeing how they would have played out in this alternate magical timeline. I discovered the rise and fall of the witch clans and their queens and how this gave way to the burning times and the persecution of the magically gifted. The civil war where malevolent magic rose and the witches of the day stood beside the non-magical folk to fight it in a magical war that caused a shift in magic, a shift that meant that witches now needed to tether.

Editing is a key phase in my writing process, if I am exploring my way through the writing of the story then editing is where I get out the notes and musings that I’ve made on my journey and put it all into a guide book, my book bible, then I use that to edit the story so that when I share it with the reader they won’t get lost or stray from the path. It’s at this phase in the process that I might do some deeper thinking if needed or sometimes realise that things link up in a way that I didn’t notice when I was writing. It’s a little like journeying to the top of a mountain and then being able to look back at the land you have covered, seeing it all and how it relates to each other.

The Wycherleys was such a fun world to discover, I adored spending time there and I hope that you will have a magical time there too.

The Wycherleys is out now!