It is time, dear readers, for a new round of author interviews! Now that you’ve spent some time with Issue 043, let us treat you to some time with our authors. First up is Elisabeth R Moore and her story “10 Spells the Glasbläser Family Is Not Sharing With Each Other, In Order of Secrecy.”
LSQ: This story is absolutely beautiful in its gentleness and sense of a special, yet mundane sort of magic. I love the way you led the reader through the Glasblӓser family by way of their favorite spells. What gave you the idea of a setting like this?
Elisabeth: This story is actually the story i scrawled in a huff at about 6 in the morning one day while editing my novella, because I finally finally had figured out the magic system. I knew I didn’t
want to have a magic system that paralleled strength or fitness; I wanted something magical that felt magical. And then I realized — recipes. Recipes still feel magical, even in our world. It’s a letter from someone in the past, or a stranger from our present, and it connects us every time we make it. What if family spells were like family recipes? And immediately, this story sprang to mind.
LSQ: Did you come up with the spells first, or the characters? How did you match them to each other?
Elisabeth: Most of the time, the spells and the characters came together. I knew I was going to have some class anxiety in the story (post-war periods always have such amazing potential for that), and that there would be tension between some of the spells and who knew them, but I liked figuring out what was the most secret, what felt the most secret, and what spell was a secret solely because no one else had asked. I also really love stories about families — I come from a large and loud family, and so I was excited to run through the family positions — mother/father/oldest child etc — and dig deep into their motivations.
LSQ: I freely admit that I’m especially fond of Brigit’s spell—it’s my job to get lids off of things too, and I like being the one who’s always able to do it. Which of those spells is your favorite?
Elisabeth: My favorite spell? Ah! That’s so hard! I’m a middle child, and so part of me identifies 
very strongly with the tenth spell — Silke’s spell to divide things evenly between her four sisters. I, too, constantly feel like if I only I could be in charge of allotting everything, then everything would be fair. But I also love Heike’s spell — I just love the idea of a mischievous four year old, ready to steal everything.