We loved Sangu Mandanna’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches so much that we picked it as one of our 100 essential fantasies for listeners. Mandana’s first entry into the cozy fantasy genre has been beloved since its release in 2022, and now she returns to the genre with A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping.
Cozy fantasy became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has only grown in size. Mandanna’s work stands out for her unconventional casts of found family and her use of modern technology like YouTube to achieve a present-day sense of coziness. We chatted with Mandanna about her latest and what makes her novels so special.
Melissa Bendixen: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping promises to be just as charming and whimsical as The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. Did you know you always wanted to bring us another witchy, found-family story?
Sangu Mandanna: Oh, absolutely! Witches and found family are two of my absolute favorite things, so getting to combine them is always a delight. I’ll happily write a dozen more of these sorts of stories! (To be honest, I’m a little concerned my ideas will run out before my enthusiasm does…)
The narrative begins with Sera Swan, an ex-witch and magical innkeeper, who is keeping her business afloat alongside her great aunt. Curmudgeonly Luke Larsen arrives on the scene and then things get a little stirred up. What do you think listeners should know before diving into the story?
It goes without saying that there will be magic and innkeeping, but I think it’s just as important for listeners to also know that there will be tea and cinnamon buns. And romance. And a lot of shenanigans involving talking foxes, strange and wonderful magical spells, and opinionated old ladies who just want to live their best hobbit lives. Oh, and there might even be a zombie chicken.
Your other works include young adult fantasy series, like the Celestial Trilogy, and middle grade novels, such as the Kiki Kallira series. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping is your second novel in the newly coined genre of “cozy fantasy.” What initially drew you to writing within this realm?
It’s a genre I’ve always loved—though it wasn’t labelled as such until recently—and when the pandemic hit, I found myself in desperate need of a dramatic departure from the books I’d been writing so far. The Celestial Trilogy, for example, isn’t exactly dark, but it’s not cozy either. And I felt like I really, really needed to lose myself in something cozy.
Samara MacLaren is the narrator for A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping. What made her voice the perfect fit to portray Sera Swan’s story?
To be honest, I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Samara MacLaren! She’s a fantastic audiobook narrator, but she also narrated The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, and she did such a phenomenal job capturing the characters that I jumped at the chance to have her work on this one, too. She has an incredible talent for combining humor, warmth and emotion in a single line—which makes her particularly perfect for Sera’s story.
And finally, if you could be a cozy fantasy heroine, what would be your story?
That’s a great question! I don’t know about being the heroine, exactly (it sounds exhausting), but I think I’d like to be a contented little old lady who crochets in her garden all day and intervenes at exactly the right moment to save the intrepid and undoubtedly incompetent heroes from disaster.
