Stirling alumna, Fran Fullerton published her debut novel, An Element of Magic, at the end of February – 18 years after first writing it.
The English literature graduate kept up with writing her whole life, but one story from her preteen years stuck with her. She says: “I’d always wanted to go back to it, I knew it had good bones and a lot of powerful prose.”
Fullerton was encouraged to finally go for it when she got in touch with publisher Adam Beswick at A.P Beswick.
What followed was a full edit and rework of the original draft, where Fullerton made drastic changes. “It was actually set in the real world post-First World War,” she said.
“And I just decided when I was redoing it to create my world, because then I was able to do more with history and more with the lore.”
The fantasy novel follows Rose, who lives in a magical world but is powerless, despite promises that she would have the powers of her family.
When her parents die in a mysterious car crash, she must take advantage of her non-magical powers to keep her sister safe and find out what really happened among a cast of murky characters.
This is just the beginning for the author, who wrote eight other books to accompany An Element of Magic. Not all of them are likely to make the edit but Fullerton estimates that six or seven are definitely making it past publishing.
“I haven’t dug too deep into those later ones just yet, so I don’t know what nuggets I’m going to find,” she says.
Fullerton offers advice to others with that one draft from younger years – “Don’t be afraid of the cringe. Lean into it”.
An Element of Magic can be found on A.P Beswick’s TikTok shop, which offers bundles with freebies. It is also available on the A.P Beswick website and Amazon.
There is also an audiobook in the works, although Fullerton asserts that the narration would be “best left to professionals”.
Featured Image Credit: Fran Fullerton @fran.writes/Instagram
Fourth-year English and Journalism student.
News Editor 2024/25.
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