Throwback Thursday: How a Father's Story Became a Fantasy Series
The accidental career of an author who just wanted to honor her dad.
I never set out to become a career author. That's the honest truth. I had no five-year plan, no publishing roadmap, no grand vision of a sprawling fantasy series. I had a story — one story — and a father I wanted to remember in a way that felt worthy of him.
What happened next surprised me as much as anyone.
Where It All Began: A Newspaper Clipping from 1935
The inspiration came to me in 2016, several years after my father, John, passed away. Dad had a childhood marked by profound loss. He, his older brother, and his younger sister were orphaned when they were very small — their parents, Roswell and Faith Partridge, both just 28 years old, were killed in a tragic automobile accident in Portland, Oregon, on June 23rd, 1935.
The extended family split the three children apart, each raised by a different relative in a different state. My father never saw his little sister again. He only reconnected with his older brother as an adult. That loss — that fracturing of siblings — never really left him.
I found the newspaper clipping online. The headline reads: "Four Killed in Auto Wreck Near Portland." It lists the dead: Roswell L. Partridge, 28, and his wife, Faith Porter Partridge, 28. As I look at that small piece of paper, I can feel the weight of everything my father carried — and everything he never talked about.
I wanted to transform that tragedy. Take my father's story and turn him into a kind of superhero. And I discovered something that felt almost like fate: the family's great-grandfather, Edward, was a milliner — a hatmaker. And the nickname my dad went by as a kid? Jack. A detail I didn't learn until I was an adult.
Jack. And the Magic Hat Maker. The story practically named itself.
Book One: The Golden Telescope (2019)
It took me a few years to finish writing and publishing the story. In December of 2019, The Golden Telescope launched into the world — the first book in what would eventually become the Jack Mac Páidín series.
And here's an interesting side note I haven't shared anywhere else: the surname "Mac Páidín" isn't invented. When I researched my own family name — Partridge — I discovered it traces back to Ireland and originates from the name Mac Páidín. So Jack's last name is literally a version from my dad's heritage. And that's exactly why the family's ancestral home in the story, Mac Páidín Manor, sits on the outskirts of Dublin.
Book Two: The Stolen Heir (2022) — Originally The Kidnapping King
After publishing Book One, I dove headfirst into the Amazon maze — trying to figure out marketing, listings, keywords, ads. And I quickly discovered I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I also discovered something else: I had fallen completely in love with my characters.
They had developed personalities of their own. They had opinions. And the way Book One ended — it was practically begging for a sequel. So instead of cracking the marketing code, I started writing.
Book Two drew on two things I knew well: Portland, Oregon (where I was living at the time), and my love of international travel. The story flowed naturally from where I'd left off.
A note on the title: Book Two was originally published as The Kidnapping King. I recently renamed it The Stolen Heir as part of a deliberate series rebrand —
shifting from the original "Jack and the Magic Hat Maker" style to the "Jack Mac Páidín and the..." format. The reason? Shelf positioning. Think Harry Potter and the... Percy Jackson and the... Artemis Fowl and the... Aligning with the naming conventions of the big Middle-Grade franchises wasn't just cosmetic — it was strategic.
Book Three: The Magical Legacy (2023) — The Prequel I Never Planned
Here's a writing quirk I love: the very first chapter I ever wrote for Book One got cut. It didn't fit where I needed it. But I couldn't let it go.
That chapter became the prologue for Book Three — a prequel I never intended to write. The Magical Legacy tells the story of how the children's parents, Ross and Faith, met in a fantasy world, then later found each other again in the real world. Ross and Faith — named for my actual grandparents, the couple in that 1935 newspaper clipping. The ones who never made it home.
It's all fiction, of course. But I wove in real details — Ross's military service, little threads of truth. Writing that book felt like giving my grandparents the story they deserved. And I slipped in a personal tidbit too: a nod to my LDS upbringing, which plays a small role in the narrative.
Book Four: The Risky Reunion — A Genre Pivot
By the time I was writing Book Four, something had shifted. I'd learned a lot about the Middle-Grade genre — and I'd discovered some things I genuinely didn't love about writing within it. The genre's constraints on darker subject matter, on complex moral territory, on the full dramatic contrast between good and evil... they were starting to feel like a creative straitjacket.
And conveniently, my characters were growing up. Jack himself is now 13 — no longer the age of a typical MG protagonist. So I made a deliberate decision: The Risky Reunion moves into Young Adult territory. It freed me. I could explore each character's complexity more fully, dig into the darker corners of the story, and write with fewer guardrails.
It also meant letting go of the dream of being the next J.K. Rowling (we've all had that fantasy) and accepting that the story wanted to grow into something a little older, a little darker, and honestly — a lot more interesting.
Book 4.5: Angel Touched — The Happy Accident
Angel Touched happened 100% because of readers. A character named Nathaniel appeared in Book Three — a character I never intended to develop beyond that story. But readers had other ideas. I started getting messages: "What happened to Nathaniel?"
So I gave them what they were asking for. And I loved writing that story. There's something electric about a character who surprises you — who walks in as a supporting player and demands more of the page. Angel Touched is a novella, a side story that spun out of a single scene in Book Three. It's my most recently published work in the series, and it holds a special place in my heart.
Now: The Missing Sister (Work in Progress)
And now, finally, I'm writing Sadie's story.
Sadie — the missing sister, the thread that has woven through this entire series — is getting her moment. Book Five, The Missing Sister, is currently in progress. And if you know the real history behind this series... the symmetry of that is not lost on me. My father's little sister, the one he never saw again after the accident, is in some ways the heart of this story.
A Story That Grew Beyond Its Borders
What started as a single tribute to my father has become six books (and counting), a complete series rebrand, a genre pivot, a novella born from reader love, and a growing desire to write other stories — other characters, other worlds.
I didn't plan any of it. And somehow, that just makes sense.
If you're new to the series, the best place to start is right at the beginning — with Jack, a 12-year-old orphan who knows nothing about his heritage, and a magical grandfather's grief transformed into a page-turning fantasy adventure. Books 1–3 are available as a Box Set (currently getting some unexpected attention on Amazon!), and all books are published in ebook, paperback, audiobook, and hardcover editions.
~ Start the journey with Jack Mac Páidín ~
With love and a little magic,
Tracy