What does NobleBright fantasy mean to you? Why is it important?

I love that this category exists now! I avoided contemporary fantasy novels for a time because I did not want to read gritty, edgy, pessimistic books.

I have ten children and I spent a lot (A LOT) of years nursing them in the night. I was always looking for books that would be fast-paced and engaging so I didn’t fall asleep, but also would not make me lie there in the dark after the baby went back to sleep, fearing for my life or just worrying about the state of the world. I wrote WORMWOOD ABBEY with exactly the balance of suspense, comfort, humour, and mystery that I wanted.

To me, Noblebright fantasy means that the darkness in the story is there to make the light shine brighter.

How did you start writing?

I started writing fiction at the end of the hardest year of my life, 2022. I’ve always enjoyed words and writing, I’m a voracious reader and I’m a beta reader for friends who are professional authors, but writing a novel myself was completely out of left field. I wrote the first draft very quickly and it was hilarious because I had to confess to my friends (especially the authors) what I’d done. I felt a little bad about it. A lot of people dream of writing a novel and it wasn’t a huge dream of mine, I just did it—and found it incredibly addictive and now I can’t stop!

What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?

A huge influence on the style of my prose in the Ormdale books is Edith Nesbit, who wrote The Railway Children and Five Children and It.  She was one of CS Lewis’s favourite childhood authors, and she wrote family dynamics and humour and magical adventures so deftly. In fact, I named my heroine as a tribute to her work. Years ago I read one of the short stories in her Book of Dragons. It is not her best work, by any means, but it sparked a vibe in my mind that led to WORMWOOD ABBEY. When I started writing, I asked myself, how might Nesbit write a gothic novel? It would be cozy, imaginative, and funny and people would stop frequently for tea.

It took longer to realise how much Elizabeth Goudge has influenced me. I felt it very strongly when I wrote a scene at Christmas time in the final book in the series. It’s very warm and suffused with transcendence. When I was writing I went, “Oh, hello, there, Elizabeth.” Then I looked back and realised her influence is there all along, I can see it when Edith gets lost in the woods in the first book and sings the Doxology. The way Goudge wrote about faith in general market books—I owe a lot to her.

And both of these authors wrote whole families in their books, which I do as well. I have ten kids myself, so having people of all different ages around, playing a part in the story, feels normal to me.

Please tell us about your world and your characters.

My story is about a family of secret dragon keepers in late Victorian England. To them, the dragons aren’t magical, they’re just very odd endangered animals, and this allowed me to explore the idea that we live in an magical, wondrous world, and we take it for granted every day.

I wrote the world of 1899 as near to historically accurate as I could, which included reading many many novels, short stories, and memoirs from the time period, and looking at period photographs of the insides of people’s houses, and I set my series in the Yorkshire Dales, which also involved research into the local flora and fauna and topography. I was ecstatic when a reader recognised my fictionalised locations from their recent holiday in Yorkshire!

My characters are a family. They are learning more about themselves and each other, and there is a lot of warmth and humour and patience flowing between them. Readers find this very comforting. The 21 year old main character also has to learn how to be a friend—to get out of her shell and the things she’s comfortable with and to understand other people. I feel like that’s something I, as a 43-year-old woman, am still learning.

It was very funny because my heroine is also a detective novelist, but she keeps that secret from most people because it wasn’t completely respectable in 1899. And at first when I was drafting and editing my books, I felt like of like her, because almost no one knew I was writing dragon novels, and I wasn’t sure how they’d react.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?

I thought I was making a very obscure niche joke when I put a Charlotte Mason easter egg on the first page of WORMWOOD ABBEY. Turns out, Charlotte Mason people read a lot of books! It’s been wild seeing just how many people catch that. I filled my fourth book with Sherlock Holmes allusions, including a London address that only existed in Conan Doyle’s imagination. And there are a few stealth-quotes from Oscar Wilde. I love it when readers message me because they’ve found this stuff.

Does your family support your career as a writer?

So much! My husband just read the published version of my last book and he cried through the last 50 pages. My ten year old writes me anonymous fan letters. My teens have “ships” and they love helping me brainstorm plot lines. Some of the kids are lobbying me to write them into my books as characters!

On a typical day, how much time do you spend writing?

I spend one day per week writing, and I write like I’m being pursued (I probably am). My husband and I both homeschool our kids and work from home full-time running a rural hostel. (www.pilgrimhill.com.au) He’s very driven and always has too much to do, but he takes “off” (is taking care of 10 kids by yourself time off??) one day a week so I can concentrate completely on writing. That also keeps me from tippy-tapping away at 3 am when he is trying to sleep.

Describe your writing space.

I write in a shipping container turned into a shed in the forest. There’s a pademelon that visits me there every writing day. Also lizards and spiders, but they are distinctly less Instagramable. I actually check the floor for venomous snakes every time, as there is a real possibility of meeting one there. Despite all this, I love my writing shed and it makes me feel happy just to pry open the door (the handle fell off a while back).

Do you have any works in progress? Tell us about them!

I’ve had so many people writing me begging for more stories in the Ormdale world that I’m already researching and outlining a trilogy set ten years after WORMWOOD ABBEY and following the same family. The vibes will be a little different. I’m leaving “Cozy Gothic” behind and I’m aiming at Jules Verne meets Little Women. So you can imagine characters who are a bit like Jo and Beth March going on adventures with dragons and airships, but at the heart of it, it’s a cozy story about sisters.

Where can we find you online?

My newsletter [http://subscribepage.io/deledW] is where you’ll find special sales, book recommendations, and peeks at what I’m writing. On Instagram [www.instagram.com/baehrlyreading] I share a bit of my chaotic cottagecore life on a hill in Tasmania as a writer with a big family. I pop in on Facebook [www.facebook.com/christinabaehrauthor] occasionally, usually to share reviews or releases. And I’m on Goodreads and BookBub.