Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Night Beats contains plenty of writers, so what about a story starring one? Reggie Morrisey is here to tell us about her contemporary novel, Flights of Fancy, that offers us exactly that! Reggie, can you tell us about your book?

Reggie: The painting The Last Supper, by my artist husband Vincent Mancuso, graces the eBook cover, realizing in pastels my vision of the life of Sage Anthony.

I started to imagine her life on a 2014 transatlantic flight to New York and filed away my notes in a folder labeled ‘Tomorrow File.’ For literary purposes, let’s say I imagined her story on a flight from Paris to New York.

Sage Anthony is a mystery writer, pigeonholed into a genre that bores her. Murder in medieval convents and abbeys are her stock and trade, but she cannot write gore anymore. After growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley minus a biological father, taunted by a homicide-detective stepfather and wary of Stepfather #2, Sage has a mind rife with suspicion. Blunt trauma to her head makes her thirty-something life tortured, even though she lives in a loft apartment on the New Paltz, New York estate of an aging billionaire who is obsessed with her––but then, so was his wife.

Unconditional love eludes Sage. Guarded affairs and a fixation with finding her “Dad” consume her. Her Irish-born mother is similarly guarded in her affairs, critical of Sage’s choices, and she fumes as a 21st century American patriot. Her daughter is not tuned into politics or current events, only the weather.

Sage’s life proves the maxim, “What you think about expands.” Up against a book deadline, her creativity kicks in an unlikely direction. Luck follows as Sage strikes it rich and does whatever she fancies at her own New Paltz estate and in France. 

The book takes you to France more than once. The last trip is capped by a February 2020 stopover in Milan for Fashion Week. Remember what happened in the winter of 2020 in Milan and the rest of the world? Yes. That.

Zilla: What’s the link between music and your book?

Reggie: Music plays a role in all my books. Characters reveal themselves in the music that feeds their souls, and it even hints at their moods and ulterior motives.

Zilla: What author do you wish would read your books?

Reggie: Amor Towles is my ideal choice to read my books. The author of A Gentleman in Moscow is a master of plot, dialogue, pace and eras, and when it comes to surprise endings, Towles has the instincts of Edgar Allen Poe.

Zilla: What role does the setting play in your book?

Reggie: Location is so vital in my stories that each setting could be called a character.

Zilla: What’s your next writing project?

Reggie: The sequel, Gossamer Wings, launches in 2025.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Reggie: You can find Flights of Fancy by clicking on my Amazon Author Page, or aim your device camera to scan the QR-code.

Follow me on Instagram@OfTwoMinds2, and find me on Goodreads. Check out my Reading Nook interview about my 2022 eBook, The Monks of Malibu. And visit my website to read short stories and essays, read or listen to my poetry, see works of art and learn more about Flights of Fancy