Author to Author with Mirren Hogan

Today I’ve asked Mirren Hogan, aka Maggie Alabaster, to answer a simple question: what were the top 5 stories that influenced her as a writer. She’s got some great picks.

Mirren was generous enough to share her table at Supanova with me just after I published my first novel, Divine Prey. The event was a lot of fun, and we’ve been firm friends ever since.

Thanks for stopping by Mirren!

Hi, my name is Mirren Hogan. I write reverse harem romance under the pen name Maggie Alabaster.

I live on the south coast of NSW with my husband, adult daughter, dog and a bunch of chickens.

I’ve been writing since primary school.

My first book was published in 2016. I’ve been writing under my pen name since 2019.

Chris asked me to talk about 5 books that influenced me.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The first one would have to be The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but I get something new from it each time.

The idea of walking through a garden and having a little robin tell you where to find a secret magical place that needs love, as much as Mary Lennox did, resonates with me.

I can relate to having lonely times in life. Or times when I wanted a special place to go and sit. A place to nurture and heal.

That sounds perfect, especially in this crazy world.

It’s also one of the first books I remember reading. It made me fall in love with books. That’s magic right there, right?

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The second book is A Little Princess, also by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Apparently she had a thing about lonely girls who’d gone through stuff. Maybe I did too, I don’t know. Lol

Anyway, this book is the quintessential ‘riches to rags to riches again tale.’ Like The Secret Garden, Sara was helped by a friendly animal, this time a monkey, and in turn she helped to lift other people up with her.

She made friends with another girl who was in a worse situation than she was. When she got out of it, she took her with her. Like they say, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’

I guess you could say it inspired me, because I always want want to lift up other people when I can, and not bring them down. If good things happen to me, I want them to happen to other people too. What’s the point of getting up the ladder if you can’t turn around and give a hand to the person behind you?

Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews

The third book is, believe it or not, Flowers in the Attic, by Virginia Andrews.

This book showed me there were some depraved people out there, and as long as it’s only fiction, people want to read it too.

That probably wasn’t the lesson in there, but that’s what I took from it.

It took me a few years to realise, I suppose because I didn’t think of myself as someone who enjoys reading books with taboo subjects in it.

Or didn’t want to admit it. Here we are though. Like I said, as long as it’s fiction.

The Kit Davenport series by Tate James

The fourth is not a book but a series.

The Kit Davenport series by Tate James was the first reverse harem series I ever finished reading.

At the time I was writing fantasy and sneaking over into urban fantasy.

When I read this series, I realised it’d be a lot of fun to add some romance to my urban paranormal series.

I started with a short story just to see how it’d go, and I had so much fun, I’ve never looked back.

Butcher and Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

The last book is a more recent inspiration, Butcher and Blackbird by Brynne Weaver.

For a while now, my books have started to become a bit darker, but I always have a dorky sense of humour, which wouldn’t be contained no matter how hard I tried. I like a bit of mafia, a bit of doing horrible dark things to characters who deserve it, but my characters were always cracking jokes. Usually at inappropriate times. They share my dark humour, I guess.

Butcher and Blackbird is about serial killers who kill other serial killers. It’s also hilarious. When I read it, I realised I was silly for thinking I couldn’t be dark and funny at the same time. Finally, I could let loose and write exactly what I had been wanting to write for so long. It inspired my most recent series, Best Served Cold, which is also a serial killer romcom, but with reverse harem in the mix as well. It was hands down the most fun I’ve ever had writing a series. The words flowed so beautifully, and I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I enjoyed it so much that I then wrote another dark rom-com series, Drop-Dead Lethal. The first book released on April 9th.