SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Hazel Beck‘s “Truly Madly Magically,” which hit shelves Aug. 27.
“Truly Madly Magically” authors Megan Crane and Nicole Helm, collectively known by the pen name Hazel Beck, have one more book in their “Witchlore” series to wrap up the stories of witch friends Emerson, Rebekah, Ellowyn, Georgie and their battle against the evil Joywood coven before the four-installment witchy saga ends.
And with a year to go between the release of Ellowyn’s tale of second-chance romance, unexpected pregnancy and friendly ghosts in “Truly Madly Magically” this August, and the September 2025 launch of Georgie’s story, “Dragon Fires Everywhere,” there’s much to discuss about where things are heading before the big finale for the book series that began with 2022’s “Small Town, Big Magic.” Here to help with the wait are Crane and Helm with hints for Variety about the end of the story.
“Georgie has to find her power and her true self, and also her true love, who has been in this series since Book 1 — just gonna point that out there, just remember we said that,” Crane said. “I know that friends of ours who’ve read the books have said, Georgie is such an enigma. And I guess she is, and that’s always easier to do as a secondary character.”
“I think her being an enigma makes her a little bit isolated in a different way than Ellowyn is, and she’s off in her own little world sometimes,” Helm said. “And we just had to figure out why.”
“She’s the most bookish. Emerson runs the bookstore, but Georgie is the one with her face in a book constantly,” Crane said. “And we are also book girls ourselves, so we relate to that. You have all these fantasy worlds in your head, and how does that relate to reality? Do you have people in your life telling you, oh, you have to be realistic, you have to pick a realistic career. People said that to me and I became a romance author. So that’s a process for anyone, to figure out how to take fantasies and make them real or not. And I think there’s many a literary novel that is based on the tension between what you wanted to be and what you’re not, and what we get to do is actually delve into that in a more joyful manner.”
Crane added that the ending made both counterparts of Hazel Beck cry, even though they “are so grizzled that we do not often cry at our own work.” With what they call a “really beautiful in some ways, and maybe a little bit bittersweet in others” ending set for next fall, the “Small Town, Big Magic” authors are open to giving the books new life in a TV series or film adaptation — especially given the romance genre’s recent resurgence in Hollywood.
“I’ve seen enough adaptations to know that you have to do something different for TV or movie or book,” Helm told Variety. “So we’d want whoever can make the most cohesive story in that format.”
“I think that it would lend itself to a TV series beautifully,” Crane added. “When I think about how people construct really amazing TV series from books or book series, you can tell the ones that are failures and the ones that are really great. And I think the really great ones do take some liberties and make an even more cohesive world out of what they’re playing with. I would love to think that someone will do that. I just think that these books lend themselves to that so beautifully. We would love it.”