Hey, all. I’m Tegan Maher, and let me start by saying what an honor it is to be part of this amazing group of authors and readers!
I’d like to share a little bit about myself and my worlds, and the inspiration behind them. I like to dabble with different magical genres, so I write paranormal cozy mysteries, light urban fantasy, and paranormal women’s fiction. Magical books have taken me away to worlds of wonder since I was a child, and they’re where my literary heart lives.
Let me say upfront that I love writing stories about strong women, no matter their age. All my ladies are down-to-earth Southern realists who face life head-on, and each of them shares bits and pieces of me at different points in my life. I live in Florida and raised my son on a bartender’s salary, so many of my series are based around the Gulf Coast, and most of my girls work or got their start at a restaurant or bar.
I have a vivid imagination, and while I’m writing, my characters come to life in my head. Like me, some of them are persistent and stubborn. They simply won’t just go to bed once the book is finished, so I’ve ended up giving a few of them their own series. As a result, most of my worlds are intertwined. Like most small towns, everybody knows everybody!
Witches of Keyhole Lake Mysteries
My first-ever series, The Witches of Keyhole Lake Mysteries, started back in 2017. Noelle, the main character, is a twenty-something witch faced with raising her kid sister, Shelby, when her aunt passes. She’s sassy, witty, grounded, and takes life by the horns. In her first book, Sweet Murder, the evil sheriff dies and does a faceplant in his coleslaw at the local fair right after she’s had a come-to-Jesus moment with him.
Noelle has a fabulous group of family and friends that help her solve mysteries, and her cantankerous talking donkey, Max, is a source of both wisdom and humor.
That series now has fifteen books and several novellas, but her kid sister aged out, as all teenagers do. Rather than just let her go, I eventually gave Shelby her own series, but we’ll get to that.
Cori Sloane Witchy Werewolf Mysteries
After I had a few books in the Keyhole Lake series, I started another one called Cori Sloane, Witchy Werewolf. This was at a dark time in my life, so Cori’s a little less light-hearted than my other girls. She carries a lot of responsibility on her shoulders and takes her role as sheriff and pack leader seriously. She’s still funny, but her wit is drier, and she has a tendency toward gallows humor. Of course, running a town founded by a vampire that’s home to all sorts of shifters keeps her plate full.
Something funny happened after my first few Cori books. I mentioned her cousin, Destiny, in passing, and instantly, a new character popped to life in my head. That happens to me a lot, but Destiny Maganti just wouldn’t zip it. She yelled until I gave her her own series, and The Enchanted Coast Magical Mysteries series was born.
Enchanted Coast Magical Mysteries
Destiny’s a water witch and tiki bartender at a paranormal resort. I love writing in this one, since the Florida Gulf Coast holds a huge place in my heart. Like Noelle, Destiny is sassy and down to earth, but she’s also irreverent and extroverted. In short, she’s me back when I was bartending, except she has a hot werewolf boyfriend and magic to clean up spilled frozen drinks and take down bad guys!
Cori, Destiny, and Cori’s sister Mila all have Arctic Fox familiars who are sisters, and each of them is snarky, wise, and full of sass just like their wards.
After I shushed Destiny by giving her a voice, Shelby came back to the forefront. Rather than give her a cozy mystery series, though, I went more toward urban fantasy with her. Right now, she has two books with a third coming, and it’s her responsibility as an angel-touched witch to use her magic to track down a coven of evil witches bent on destroying white magic. She has her fellow students, a three-headed hellhound who loves treats, and a whiskey-swilling, cigar-smoking orangutan who gives her a hard time while imparting bits of wisdom via sarcasm.
During her travels, Destiny meets a fallen angel named Kira, who’s featured in my up-and-coming Southern Soul Hunter series. Kira’s also a frequent character in both this series and my Witches of Abaddon’s Gate series, which features Mila, Cori’s sister, as the main character.
As I just mentioned, Mila is Cori’s sister and runs a potions and lotions shop in the magical city of Abaddon’s Gate, Florida. This series straddles cozy mystery and urban fantasy because Mila is sucked into Kira’s world, hunting down random killers as well as souls who’ve escaped purgatory and are wreaking havoc on her town.
Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries
Unlike all my other series, this one isn't connected. Sage popped into my head while I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Let me say that Sage is a bit different than my other girls and so is her world. It's lighter even though the stories themselves lean more toward light urban fantasy. I was in a great place in my life when I started this series, and that's apparent from the tone.
Here's a snippet that sums her up better than I could!
"How was I supposed to know the town founders sank a trunk full of cursed objects? Seriously, they should have at least put a warning label on it because had I known, I would have left it at the bottom of the ocean. But they didn't, so I didn't, and now we've set dozens of artifacts into the hands of the blissfully unaware non-magicals who live in our small town."
It's up to her to recover them all, but unfortunately, she doesn't always manage to find them before the curses are tripped. All she can do is recover them as quickly as possible before they do any more harm!
A Shot of Midlife Magic Paranormal Women’s Fiction Series
Finally, I dipped my toe into the paranormal women’s fiction genre because I was itching to write about a character closer to my age. Jules Cavanaugh is forty-nine and leaves her husband to start over at the tiki bar on the Gulf Coast of Florida that her father left her. There, she takes her rightful heritage as a witch and meets Ronan, a handsome, smart, kind, badass wolf shifter. Together, they’re fighting to preserve the balance between white and dark magic and enjoying a few margaritas along the way.
So far, all of the characters in this series are behaving themselves and are content to hang out at the Tipsy Flamingo, but I never know when one will insist on breaking out!
My goal is to create rich, vivid worlds that you, dear reader, want to visit over and over. I want to give you a place to relax, make friends, and forget about the mundane for a while. If I can do that, then I’m happy to tap my wand to my laptop and whisper, “Mischief Managed,” at least until next time!
I invite you to step into one of my worlds, and I’d love to hear from you at teganmaherbooks.com! If you’d like to follow me via my newsletter, Amazon, or Facebook, here are those links, as well.
Happy reading, and I hope you find all the magic you wish for!
Tegan 🙂
