The Woman Behind the Magic

Who is Jessica Lee?

The Story That Launched the Magic

I've been reading and writing for as long as I can remember. My favorite books as a child were the fantastical: witches and fairies and dragons. When I wasn't reading about magic, I would try to bring it to life with my friends while playing pretend in imaginary worlds I dreamed up. My childish writing expeditions were less spectacular, ranging from informational books about the life cycle of a butterfly to a self-illustrated and unfinished novel titled The War of Canada that I handwrote the first two chapters of as a third grader. (Imagine Titanic but with a war set in a location I had never visited.)

Life, as it tends to, forced some of the magic out of me, but I continued writing, though it was often in the form of academic essays or creative ventures assigned by my well-meaning teachers.

Then one day during high school, I faced a life-altering, traumatic event. In its catastrophic wake, I journaled, sharing my experience in real-time with curious friends and relatives and strangers as life unfolded before me. People thanked me for sharing my experiences and for helping them to experience firsthand an event that played out for weeks on the news. I have a distinct memory during this time of a family friend who called me and told me that I should publish a book. That my story was worth telling.

I didn't publish a book. I moved on with my life and went to college. I read literature and wrote essays. I graduated and got a job. Then another. I went to grad school. I got a promotion. I stopped reading. I stopped writing. I moved through life, checking all the boxes that darted into my path.

Until I picked up a romantasy book that brought me back home to myself. It wasn't just the magic; it wasn't just the romance; it wasn't just the world or the plot or the writing. It was an intense nostalgia for the magic of childhood that life asks us to leave behind. It was an epiphany that the ordinary magic of being human and having relationships can be understood anew when we encounter ourselves in fantastical realms.

I did not stop reading. Tens of thousands of pages. Dozens of series and authors. Endless late nights of "just one more page." Scoffs and eye-rolls and uncomfortable laughter and "oh, you read fairy smut" that taught me how important it is for women to read and write stories for the joy of it. That burned into me the importance of showing others that romantasy is real literature.

And so, I wrote my own story.

It is romance and fantasy and literature and real and raw. It is an ode to every woman who has been cast aside or talked over or told to give up her magic.

I can't wait for you to read it.