My First Book

Interview with debut author Michelle Hébert

Michelle Hébert grew up on the beaches and marshes of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, degrees in journalism and social work, and she studies tarot on the side. Her writing about mental health, social justice, and finding joy where it seems there's none to be had has appeared in Writerly magazine and in audio essays and short documentaries for CBC Radio. Her first book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict After the Halifax Explosion, was published in 2009. Michelle has lived across Canada but makes her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Mi'kma'ki), with several cats, a dog, and her two adult children. You can find more of her writing (and pictures of her cats) at michellehebertwrites.com.

My First Book: Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

A darkly humorous family saga woven around tarot cards and a mixtape of '80s songs, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is a heady mix of music, ghosts, love, and nostalgia.

Paperback: 344 pages
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing
Date Published: May 7, 2024
Subjects: Fiction / Coming of Age / Family Life

“Michelle Hébert’s debut novel is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story about a young woman’s journey towards the acceptance of her family, with a focus on trust and love and a surprising narrative twist that is skillfully woven into the story.”

–ATLANTIC BOOKS TODAY

How did you become a writer?

I was the quintessential bookish child reading Anne of Green Gables under a tree in the backyard. I was fascinated with the idea that there are whole worlds contained between two covers. It’s amazing to think about, really, isn’t it? – someone’s imagination has been projected onto the page for others to see, and then it becomes part of the reader’s imagination. I knew I wanted to be part of that magic.

I wrote stories for my friends in elementary school, was editor of the high school paper, and then went to journalism school. Life took a turn, and I ended up not writing for a very long time (we’re talking decades). When I did start again, it was like a dam burst – I’d found myself, and I’d found my words. Last spring, I graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction – just a couple of weeks after my first novel was published.

What’s your elevator pitch for this book?

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is the story of a young woman searching for life’s magic despite her family’s belief that she’s cursed. Told with dark humour and lots of 1980s nostalgia, it’s a tale of family, love, loss, and the things that haunt us through our lives.

This is your first book - why did you need to tell this story?

My grandmother once told me about a family in her village who everyone thought was cursed because the men died young. There was a boy in the family who was roughly my age, and I wondered what that would do to you, growing up thinking you’re doomed. Of course, I’m Gen X and was a teen in the 80s when everything in our culture – even the happy synth dance music – reflected our conviction that we would imminently die in a nuclear attack, so that sense of doom was everywhere. But at its core, this is a story about mental health and grief and learning to let go of what hurts while holding on to the parts that feed your soul.

What was your journey from idea to publication?

I started writing this over 15 years ago. I’d written a terrible first manuscript that I hid in the proverbial desk drawer (and it will stay there), but two of the characters stayed with me. Parts of them eventually morphed into Kitten and Queena.

I kind of cannibalized the first few chapters from the Very Bad Manuscript and rewrote them, over and over, for a few years without making progress or even understanding what the story was. I’d give up for a year or so, but then I’d hear a song on the radio and it would make me think of something a character should do, so I’d start again. Then, in December 2020, after a huge disruption in my life, I told myself I’d give it one last go. Words started flowing, and by May 2021, I had a finished manuscript.

I thought I was done. But in the summer of 2021, both of my parents became ill. They died within six weeks of each other. Given my new experience with grief, I had to revisit how Kitten and Queena reacted to things, so I spent a few months rewriting. I queried the revised manuscript in April 2022 and heard back from Nimbus very quickly. That happened on my father’s birthday, and it felt to me like he had a hand in it, somehow.

The published book is very different from the manuscript I submitted to Nimbus, though. My fantastic editors, Stephanie Domet and Whitney Moran, really challenged me to look at the story’s structure – how I could I tell it without letting the reader in on all of Kitten’s secrets? I did a major overhaul, and to make the new structure work, I needed a character who had insight into all the others and saw things they didn’t. So, I created Nerida. It’s hard to believe she wasn’t originally part of the story.

What was your playlist when writing this book (either literally or thematically?)

The whole novel is based on a mixtape of songs from the 70s and 80s! I started using the song titles as a kind of shorthand – I’d hear a song and it would make me think of something I wanted to happen in a chapter, so I’d write it down. After I had a few chapters with these song titles, I realized it was working well with the text, and the mixtape was born. I spent a lot of time searching for just the right songs to go with each chapter (it was a wonderful time-waster). I think there are close to 50 songs in the book, so I went through a lot of Top 40 lists. My only criteria were that the song couldn’t be something that’s been overplayed, and they had to be songs I really liked, because I listened to them again and again as I worked on the book.

What do you hope readers will take away after reading Every Little Thing She Does is Magic?

I hope they’ll consider that we’re all more than the stories our families tell about us. I hope they’ll think about how society treats people who are hurting mentally and emotionally, and that ignoring our feelings won’t make them go away. Maybe a reader might even decide to reach out for help. And finally, I hope readers will think about what songs would be on their own mixtapes (and as Nerida suggested, make a funeral playlist so you don’t end up with screechy organ music!).

What do you know now that your first book has been published that you wish you knew when you first had the inspiration to write it?

I wish I’d accepted that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. I got so hung up on polishing every word in those early chapters as I went along that it kept me from progressing. I was too focused on the words, at the expense of the story. In the end, most of that writing I’d spent so much time obsessing over didn’t make the final cut, anyway. I’m working on another novel now, and I’m doing a better job at just getting the story out of my head and onto the paper, ugly and unpolished, but told. Editing is where the magic gets into the story – you take that big pile of unpolished words and sculpt them into something more beautiful. That’s the goal, anyway.

What’s next for you?

I have a completed nonfiction manuscript, a memoir called A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying, about my experience living with dissociative amnesia for many, many years. I’m just sitting with it a bit right now, because I also learned from Every Little Thing that you may think the manuscript is complete, but it’s not. You need to walk away and let it cure for a bit, before you come back to it with a better understanding of what it is.

Right now, I’m working on a novel, tentatively called Sea of Grass, which takes place on the Tantramar marsh between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It’s a contemporary story with a secondary storyline that takes place in the 1880s. It’s about the toxic nature of guilt, the risks we take to hide our true selves from others, and whose stories we consider worth preserving and telling.

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by Michelle Hébert

A darkly humorous family saga set in Nova Scotia about a young woman coming of age in a family that believes it's cursed, for fans of Emma Straub and Lesley Crewe.

Kitten Love's family is haunted by the memory of her teenaged aunt, Nerida, who died just days before Kitten's birth in 1970. Her mother, Queena, believes the family is cursed, and she's determined not to let disaster strike again. She won't let Kitten out of her sight—especially to visit the beaches that surround the town. She's built a bomb shelter to protect against Soviet attack, and she's desperate to protect her husband, Stubby, from the fatal and mysterious Love Heart.

Kitten thinks she knows how to defeat their curse: magic. But when protection spells and clues from tarot cards aren't enough to save Stubby, Kitten turns her back on the things that make her life magical, and Queena turns her back on reality. She preserves everything as it was the day Stubby died in 1987—from the gold shag rug in the bathroom to the Duran Duran posters in Kitten's room. Kitten, herself, is forbidden to change.

Kitten tastes freedom when she falls in love and moves to British Columbia, but reinventing herself without the curse is harder than she expects. Tragedy and her own reliance on magical thinking eventually lead her back home to Queena, her brother Thom, and Aunt Bunny, who are equally stuck in their pasts. When tarot cards begin mysteriously showing up in her room, warning of a betrayal and encouraging an unlikely romance, she's certain someone is watching her. Could the heartbreak that almost destroyed Kitten's family be the very thing that helps them move on?