One of the Selected July Features from Story Monsters Ink — Cindy Callaghan

As a child, Callaghan struggled with reading in school. “At an early age I wasn’t good at it, and I was put into the Turtle reading group,” she says. “Not joking; that’s what it was called. I might’ve been a slow reader, but I wasn’t dumb. I knew what the label meant, and I resented it. That gave me a certain attitude about reading and probably school in general.” For someone who didn’t like to read, Callaghan spent a lot of time at the library. “I often had a big book from the library in my backpack,” she says. “I didn’t read it, but I loved the idea of loving to read it.”

Reading was a challenge for young Callaghan, but she was an avid writer in school. “I don’t remember any specific moment of encouragement,” she recalls. “I’d always hoped for, ‘You’ll be a writer someday,’ but I never got it. I persisted because when you’re a writer, you can’t not write, but also maybe to prove myself.” Callaghan credits one high school teacher, Miss Peters, with teaching her a key tenet of being a writer. “She tasked us to write, and as memory serves me, that’s how we were graded; on whether or not we wrote,” she says. “Not on the quality
or the quantity. She just wanted our №2 pencils moving.
And any writer will appreciate that lesson as one of the most important. It’s Writer’s Lesson Number One: Butt in chair, №2 pencil moving.”

Callaghan initially considered pursuing a career as a screenwriter and moved to California to study there, but plans changed. “I returned east and graduated from the University of Delaware with an English degree, concentration in film, and French minor,” she says. “And I had no idea what I was going to do with it.” Eventually, she earned an MBA and taught undergraduate economics classes before taking a job at a pharmaceutical company.

According to Callaghan, everything changed one day in 2005. “My oldest daughter and her two friends were attempting to bake in my kitchen,” she says. “They had so much fun, I thought it would be great if these girls had some kind of cooking club. And that thought, Maybe these girls would enjoy a cooking club was like a match scratched against a rough surface … it sparked. Like most writers, I suspect, once there’s a spark, the mind goes and goes and goes, and where it ends, nobody knows. Cooking Club? No, I can do better than that. A Secret Cooking Club! Yeah, that’s it. Anything secret is better. “

Callaghan says she had the first draft of Kelly Quinn’s Secret Cooking Club written within a few weeks and spent the next year rewriting it before shopping it around to various agents. “One responded,” says Callaghan. “The first thing she asked me to do with my masterpiece? Rewrite it! I rewrote it to her specifications, and she signed me as a client and sold the book to Simon & Schuster.” Retitled as Just Add Magic, the 2010 book was a huge hit. But Callaghan thought it had even more potential. “I always envisioned it as more than a book,” she says. “I could see the TV scenes in my head.” Today, the Emmy-nominated, Amazon Original series Just Add Magic is in its fifth season.

This ability to create content suitable for multimedia platforms sets Callaghan apart from other authors. “I believe I approach my writing career differently than most as I view it through a multi-platform lens,” she says. “That is, I simultaneously develop a project for the big or small screen, audio, and novel at the same time. The executions are different, but the heart of the stories remain and reach young readers through multiple media.” Her 2020 novel, Saltwater Secrets, has been purchased by a major studio and she’s currently working on some other screen projects.

Originally published at https://storymonstersink.com.