A FAIRYTALE BEGINNING

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FAIRYTALE a BEGINNING

a dream comes to life for one local writer

photo by cory godwin • story by hunter haskett

YOU KNOW YOU’RE ONTO SOMETHING when you can make a nine-year-old boy look up from his Legos while you’re telling a story. The moment a draft of Katrina

Mae Leuzinger’s novel piqued the interest of a young boy she was nannying, she knew it was solid enough to get published. “I got a vote of confidence from my husband, too, but after capturing a nine-year-old’s attention, I was like,

‘Okay, maybe I am good at this,’”

Katrina says with amusement. The Fairy Thief, Katrina’s debut fantasy novel that’s scheduled to hit shelves in the summer of 2022, was originally an idea from her ghostwriting days that didn’t make the cut for one client. “It started out as a pitch for one of those paranormal romance content mills,” Katrina explains. “The client asked me for ideas, and I came back with, ‘Okay, how about a romance with a woman who superstitiously starts leaving out bowls of cream for the fairies, because her stuff keeps going missing – but then a supernatural cat burglar actually shows up.’ “And the client came back with,

‘That sounds interesting, but could you make it about a werebear?’”

Katrina says with a laugh. After coming up with a different pitch, Katrina decided to keep The

Fairy Thief in her back pocket. While she initially started writing the story in 2017 on her own time – with a plot that went on to include a fast-paced search for a missing key through the fae-infested streets of Los Angeles – she wound up shelving it for a while before picking it back up and finishing it two years later.

During that interval, Katrina kept up her day jobs as a journalist, ghostwriter and a content creator for mobile games.

“I started working for mobile gaming companies because they paid me to write fiction,” Katrina says cheerfully. “I’d get assignments like, ‘So there’s a three-headed dragon who eats this woman – do all three heads come to life? Or just one?’ Those are the kind of questions that just don’t normally come up in journalism.”

But after a particularly traumatic experience ghostwriting an AmishChristian romance novel that she ended up having to relinquish all rights to, Katrina decided it was time for her name to be on the front cover – not anybody else’s.

With that in mind, Katrina dusted off The Fairy Thief and sent 115 query letters to various publishers and agents. Forty-four rejection letters and one year later, she finally landed a deal with Dreaming Big Publications.

“I went through what was essentially a phone book for literary agents from A to Z, and I queried anyone who was accepting fantasy,” Katrina says. “But once I reached the end, I still hadn’t found anyone who was interested in my manuscript. And I was like, where do I go from here?”

That was when Katrina finally received the answer she’d been waiting for.

It came in the form of an email at 11 p.m. – and it took a moment for her to realize that what initially sounded like yet another rejection letter was actually a publishing deal.

“My husband was sleeping, but I ran into our bedroom, flipped on the light and started reading him the email,” Katrina says. “He didn’t understand what the hell was going on at first, but I got through the whole thing – while basically screaming – and then we had to call everyone we know and love.

“I’m really looking forward to all the cool craft shows and festivals next summer,” she says, while adding that she already has the outline for a sequel in mind. “I’m going to be out there in my booth trying to sell this novel – quite possibly while wearing fairy wings.”