The Big Idea: William C. Tracy

There’s much to discuss with Pressure Magic, but what’s really the big sell (at least up front) is a very large magical animal. It’s not just me who thinks so: author William C. Tracy is super-excited to tell you all about it too! WILLIAM C. TRACY: This is a story about a giant sea otter. That was the main idea I came up with when drafting Pressure Magic, the third book in my Shifting Lands series, which contains a protagonist with only one arm, martial arts magic, and fast-moving islands. (You can read about the first book in Big Idea here and the second book at Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favorite Bit here. All right, now that you’re all caught up, let’s talk about that giant otter. I should say, my wife loves otters. Might be her favorite animal. Whenever we go to a zoo or see one on TV, she says (jokingly) that we should get one and set up a pool in the backyard. This third book in the series is a “learning” book, where the characters level up, find out more about the world, and…