Dear readers, today I’m excited to bring you a guest post from Nancy McCabe, the author of a new middle grade book, Fires Burning Underground. Read on for more, and let me know in the comments if you’ve read this book or any of her previous books.

Fires Burning Underground
by Nancy McCabe

Fitzroy Books, 2025

ISBN 978-1646035601

The last year of childhood: the magical friendship that inspired Fires Burning Underground

Anny, the narrator of my middle grade novel Fires Burning Underground, experiences a transition similar to my own when I was her age. Anny has always been homeschooled, but at the beginning of the story, sets off to attend public school for the first time. I graduated from a small rural elementary school to go to a much larger junior high in a suburban part of the city. Like Anny, I came from a conservative religious family, and like her, I went from being a talkative, imaginative kid to a shy and awkward one. It felt like my personality had suddenly changed.

But then I met M. We sat together at lunch on the first day of school, and around her, I felt braver, able to be my talkative and sometimes silly self. We became best friends. As an adult, I always thought of my friendship with M. as the last months of my childhood. 

M. was everything I wanted to be: smart and imaginative and dreamy. Like me, she loved books and was drawn to creative activities. Already an accomplished pianist way beyond my skill level, she was fascinated by ESP and Ouija Boards. She wanted to write a book someday and be an actress and an artist. Together we were always scheming to follow in the footsteps of some of our literary heroines and put on a play, throw a carnival in one of our backyards, go camping in the dry creekbed near my house, and create a treasure hunt for a friend.

I had creative aspirations, but my ambition typically outstripped my ability. I stitched pillows and doll clothes, made rya and latch hook rugs and potholders, tried embroidery, decided to learn to knit, and worked on learning harder piano music. I often abandoned these endeavors without getting very far, and the projects I did complete were less-than-satisfactory, as were my art projects at school. I gave my own haphazard crafting aspirations and failures to Anny as she tries to figure out what she IS good at.

Anny and Larissa also embark on a lot of the same plans and projects that M. and I did. Some get abandoned, some come to fruition though not quite the way they’d imagined, and along the way, some unexpected things happen. Like me at twelve, Anny has trouble talking about what is most weighing on her: questions about her identity and grief over the death of a friend in a fire. Sometimes she’s sure he’s haunting her. 

Like Anny, at that age, I also had no interest in boys and was much more focused on female friendship. That was one of the most significant contributors to the deterioration of my friendship with M., who developed a crush on a boy and knew I wouldn’t begin to understand. We drifted apart more gradually than Anny and Larissa do. I had trouble letting my childhood go. I clung to it. I mourned its loss.

I hadn’t seen or talked to M. for more than thirty years when I found her on Facebook and told her that I was writing a children’s book based on our enchanted year. She responded with the exact same words I’d always used to describe that time: “I always think of that year as the last one of my childhood.” In the end, despite all of the difficult parts of childhood, I feel lucky to have also experienced the gift of that magical friendship.

Next Gen Indie Award winner Nancy McCabe draws deep inspiration from her own life. From the tragic loss of a friend in a church fire to the magical relationship with her childhood best friend, Fires Burning Underground is an homage to the youth Nancy left behind, the lessons she learned on her path to adulthood, and the guidance she passionately shares with her audience. When she’s not working on her stories, she shares her passion for teaching young people how to write through her work as a professor. She is the author of a young adult novel, Vaulting through Time, a new adult ghost story, Following Disasters, and several nonfiction books for adults. She lives in northwestern Pennsylvania, where she teaches writing workshops to participants of all ages.