Ivy Cassidy: On Magic and Inheritance
In this interview, author Ivy Cassidy discusses how interest and research combined to create her historical fantasy, House of Spells and Secrets.
Ivy Cassidy writes atmospheric women’s fiction threaded with folklore, legacy, and the magic of memory. Her stories explore the places where ancestry and intuition meet, where homes hold secrets, and where women rediscover their strength across generations. With lyrical prose and emotionally resonant storytelling, she creates immersive worlds that linger long after the final page.
Cassidy is the author of House of Spells and Secrets, a historical fantasy set in 1971 that blends family mystery with inherited magic. She also writes under other pen names and has authored more than 35 novels across multiple genres, bringing decades of storytelling experience to her Ivy Cassidy work.
She lives in North Carolina, where she is often found writing, painting, making pottery, or walking beneath the tall trees … always listening for the next story waiting to be told.
Name: Ivy Cassidy
Book title: House of Spells and Secrets
Publisher: Alcove Press
Release date: March 24, 2026
Genre/category: Historical fantasy/Mystery/Magical Realism/Women’s Fiction
Elevator pitch: When three sisters return to the house that holds their forgotten legacy, the walls whisper of magic, betrayal, and the secrets their mother never told them.
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What prompted you to write this book?
I've always been fascinated with the magic I wish existed in our everyday lives. I love bringing this magic to the page. When I started thinking about my next novel, there were three elements that I really wanted to braid together:
- The idea of a sentient house that holds memories and knowledge and, yes, magic.
- Sisters who must uncover secrets about their legacy and inherited magic.
- I’ve always been drawn to the idea that families pass down more than traditions or stories. They pass down silence, responsibility, legacy … and especially secrets that may be meant to protect us but end up shaping us in ways we don’t fully understand until much later.
As those ideas percolated, I discovered Biddy Early, a real Irish woman tried for witchcraft in the 1850s. Her story fascinated me. Suddenly, I had a thread of inherited magic and female resilience that felt both historical and intimate.
Then I learned about Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay, a place that’s slowly sinking. The idea of a disappearing island helped me flesh out my sentient house.
Most of my novels center on strong female relationships—mothers and daughters, aunts, friends, sisters. But with House of Spells and Secrets, I was especially drawn to sisterhood and the ancient symbolism of three, specifically the Celtic triad, the strands of which can’t be separated without unraveling the whole thing. I wanted there to be something mythic about the three Connors sisters and how each carries a different facet of the same shared past.
As the story evolved, it became about sisterhood, inherited magic, and the emotional cost of buried truths, especially in a place that remembers everything. Swallow Hall isn’t just a backdrop. It holds the family’s history in its walls, and has been waiting for the sisters to face what was left unfinished.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
This book took several years from that first spark of an idea to the finished novel. The earliest version leaned more into folklore and history, but over time, the emotional thread of the sisters working together and the mystery surrounding their mother’s choices became the real heart of the story.
The magic system evolved through the story’s iterations and the revision process. By the final draft, it’s tied directly to memory, protection, and consequence. This allowed the magical elements to intersect directly with the plot.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
One of the biggest surprises publishing this book was figuring out how to position it in a way that accurately reflected the full reading experience. I've written many mysteries under my pen name Melissa Bourbon, but House of Spells and Secrets is women's fiction with historical, fantasy, and magical realism elements. While there are some mystery elements as well, it's so much more than that. It was important to me that the book was positioned to attract the right readers—readers of Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Alan, for example—so that my promise to readers would be fulfilled.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I was surprised by how much the house itself ended up shaping the narrative. Swallow Hall became more sentient on the page than I initially planned, and that changed the way certain scenes unfolded. It became a character in its own right.
This added some mysteriousness to the narrative and left questions for the reader as to why it was sentient and what it was protecting or hiding. What secrets does it hold? What memories does it hold? The depth and importance of these questions wasn't precisely planned, but were a happy surprise.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope readers come away thinking about what we inherit from the people who came before us, and how reclaiming the truth about our past can be both frightening and uncomfortable, but also freeing.
But also, I hope they feel transported. This is a story about coming home, about belonging, and about what happens when a place knows more about you than you know about yourself.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to let your story become what it needs to be instead of what you originally planned for it to be, and be open to the surprises you discover along the way.
