Magic, romance and Houston
‘Emerald Blaze’ is the latest in Texas authors’ best-selling series
Driving west on Interstate 10, Ilona Gordon saw a Cinemark movie theater and envisioned a massive conflict involving magic.
“Even from the highway, it felt very open, a great place to set a big battle,” she says. “The ‘C’ in the Cinemark had fallen off. It looked perfect.”
Under the pen name “Ilona Andrews”, Ilona and her husband, Andrew Gordon have repeatedly made Houston a battleground for their “Hidden Legacy” books, an urban fantasy series full of familiar places and landmarks like Allen Parkway, Eleanor Tinsley Park, even a Cajun Kitchen on Wilcrest, set in an unfamiliar “world” teeming with magic, the result of a serum used to cure a pandemic in the 1800s.
“Houston readers are very particular about their city,” Ilona says. “They love it very much. So we’ve learned to be very careful. If somebody is going from point A to point B, we want to be sure they take the right roads. We’ve enjoyed it because these books have been so connected to the city.”
By “these books,” Ilona refers to the couple’s bestselling “Hidden Legacy” books, which welcomes a new title, “Emerald Blaze” this week. It’s the fifth book in the series (along with a novella) that the couple has written as
Ilona Andrews, following their “Kate Daniels” series of urban fantasies that started in 2006.
And by Houston readers, she’s referring to a regional subset of a dedicated following Ilona Andrews has built over the past 15 years, thanks to the couple’s fan engagement through its website.
“Our Houston readers are especially plugged-in with this series,” she says. “They’ve been the best part of it.”
The Gordons are a fascinating success story in fantasy and romance. Ilona was born in the Soviet Union and moved to the States as a teenager. She met Andrew at Western Carolina University.
Ace Books published their “Magic Bites,” in 2007, introducing readers to Kate Daniels, a mercenary working in an alternative Atlanta, where magic and technology function intermittently.
“For us, these stories are about what happens when there’s a shift in the power dynamic in society,” Ilona says. “A lot of times in our society there are old ways to power: wealth, obviously; technology; dominating market space; old political family clubs. We introduced magic into that like throwing a wrecking ball at societal structure.”
This approach has sent their work routinely to various bestseller lists. Ilona and Andrew (who answers to Gordon in fan circles) both repeatedly speak to their preference for an insular life with two kids and several dogs at their Hill Country home, despite working in a writing genre that thrives on reader interactivity. Prior to the pandemic, they did their duty appearing at book events and conventions.
Their “Hidden Legacy” series came about almost by accident. A friend who writes vampire novels for Avon Books recommended them to Erika Tsang, an editor at Avon Books. Before they even had a fully developed proposal for a new series, they had an offer from the publisher.
So they had a green light for a story that hadn’t been conceived. Jill Smith, a reviewer for Romantic Times, told Ilona she hoped she’d do something related to a family.
“So I thought, ‘Oh, OK, we should do a family story,’” she says.
“Which was also wish fulfillment for us,” Andrew adds. “Neither of us has a big family. I was raised by an aunt and uncle.”
Ilona adds that her family didn’t entirely approve of her chosen vocation.
“I don’t have anybody to share our success with,” she says. “For years and years, I’d tell (my father) about how these books were doing. And he would sigh heavily and say, ‘That’s good.’ No matter how much acclaim or how much money we earn, I’m still an abject failure until I get my bachelor’s degree. It’s an old Russian mindset. If it’s not academic, it’s not enough.”
So family is at the center of the “Hidden Legacy” novels, starting with “Burn for Me,” released six years ago. It introduced Nevada Baylor, a detective whose magic allows her to know when someone is lying. Hers is a world with familiar geographic locations but an entirely unfamiliar societal structure based around families and their magic. The family proved crucial, both as a source of support and conflict as well as subsequent novels. As the series developed, Ilona Andrews transferred focus from Nevada to her sister Catalina, who is the protagonist in “Emerald Blaze,” working as a deputy for the Warden of Texas, monitoring magic usage while also nursing a heart broken by a Prime (the highest rank of magic user) named Alessandro, who finds his way back into her life.
The novels are further populated by a conspiratorial matriarch, various wielders of magic, monsters and, well, handsome and mysterious men with opaque intentions.
“There was a practical element to it,” Andrew says. “If the Nevada book did well, we could always do a book on one of the siblings. But still, when we started this, we didn’t think there would be five books.”
They liked the idea of setting their action in Houston, though an alternate Houston in an alternate society in which magic has created a different hierarchy. Andrew cites Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” novels as an inspiration for the way they made use of Boston.
“Places like Houston and Atlanta are a big part of Americana,” Ilona says. “They have distinct moods and layouts. They’re no more or less worthy than London or Boston or New York. Why not set these stories in the South?”
To describe the alternative Jersey Village of “Emerald Blaze” is to spoil a nasty surprise.
Much as the couple has reinvented Houston in their series, as Ilona Andrews the two have also recreated the idea of an author/ reader community. Both Ilona and Andrew engage actively with their readers through their site and their blog. They also routinely present previously unpublished content on the site for fans to read free of charge. They returned to the Kate Daniels world with a new project titled “Ryder” that has been made available for free, one chapter at a time on their site. “Blood Heir,” the complete finished novel, will go on sale in January.
“When COVID hit, I had to unplug and turn off email a little bit,” Ilona says. “The slog of grief and anxiety and death was so heavy. But we started getting emails, people whose parents had died or people who were sick and scared, asking if we’d post some little thing. This was not something we planned to do.”
Adds Andrew: “Others would tell us that one of our books took them out of these difficult places for an hour. For us, that’s the best thing we can do. Take somebody out of reality for a little bit.”
“(Some readers) would tell us that one of our books took them out of these difficult places for an hour. For us, that’s the best thing we can do. Take somebody out of reality for a little bit.”
Andrew Gordon