Over the course of writing seven books in my Magical Papillon Mysteries series (yes, seven… I know you only have six in your hands right now, but the others are coming, pinky promise), I have learned so much it’s almost embarrassing.
Not in a tragic way. In a “how did I not know this before?” way.
When I wrote the first Magical Papillon book, I thought I understood pacing. I thought I understood tension. I thought I understood when to let a ghost float dramatically through a wall and when to let a single mother drink her coffee in peace.
Turns out, I did not.
Enter Rosewood Hollow. That charming, magical, slightly nosy town that now feels as real to me as my own kitchen. Somewhere between book one and book seven, I learned that magic has rules. Ghosts have boundaries. Secrets need air. Action needs silence. And pauses? Pauses are powerful. Sometimes the most important moment in a story is the breath between two sentences.
When I was writing A Pinch of Peril, I remember staring at a scene thinking, “Something’s off.” The Christmas lights were twinkling. The tension was there. The suspect was suspicious in a very suspicious way. And yet… it felt rushed. That’s when I realized story pacing isn’t about how fast something happens. It’s about how deeply it lands.
I learned to let moments linger. To trust quiet scenes. To let Sarah feel things instead of immediately solving things. I learned that Emma and Cory needed space to grow. I learned that Pixie—my sassy fictional Papillon with opinions—would absolutely steal a scene if I let her.
And then there’s Blueberry. My real-life Papillon. The muse. The supervisor. The tiny, fluffy quality control department. If you think I wrote nine books alone, you are wildly mistaken.
Blueberry has sat through every draft, every rewrite, every dramatic sigh. She has judged plot twists with one ear raised. She has napped through action scenes. She has insisted on snack breaks during emotional climaxes.
She knows things.
Here’s the part that makes me laugh, though. With each book, I genuinely think, “Oh. This one is better.” The dialogue flows more naturally. The mysteries weave tighter. The magic feels richer. The town feels more alive. I can see the growth so clearly it’s almost like looking at old photographs of myself and thinking, “Oh wow. That was my haircut?”
Which brings me to the dangerous thought.
There are moments when I’m tempted to go back to book one and “fix” things. Tighten a scene. Adjust a line. Sprinkle in a little extra foreshadowing. Add a dramatic ghostly breeze here and there.
And then I stop myself.
Because those books are exactly what they are meant to be.
Every single one of them is a little time capsule. A snapshot of who I was when I wrote it. The worries I had. The confidence I didn’t have yet. The lessons I was learning in real time. The joy I felt when a scene clicked. The frustration when it didn’t. The quiet growth that happens when you show up to the page again and again and again.
As a reader, you don’t see that. You see a mystery unfolding in Rosewood Hollow. You see magic and family and secrets and justice and maybe a tiny bit of Christmas sparkle.
But I see the evolution.
Book by book, I see myself becoming braver with plot twists. Gentler with emotional beats. More patient with pacing. More trusting of silence. More confident in the rules of my own magical universe.
And that makes me ridiculously happy.
Because growth is invisible while it’s happening. It’s only when you look back that you realize how far you’ve come.
So no, I won’t rewrite the early books. I won’t polish away the evidence of my learning curve. I won’t smooth out every imperfect sentence.
They are mine. They are honest.
And each one carries a little piece of me. And Blueberry.
Just know that.
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