Meet Kentucky’s Meg Shaffer, bestselling author of ‘The Wishing Game’

For Meg Shaffer, much of the magic in her best-selling books happens in Louisville coffeehouses.

Characters come to life on her screen between sips of iced coffee with cream at Quills Coffee on Frankfort Avenue and the Heine Brothers on Chenoweth Lane. Sometimes the details of a new world form over a steaming mug at Fante’s Coffeehouse. Every day, she and her husband choose a Derby City coffeehouse that serves as the setting for her novels. Her work is aimed at adult readers who cherished stories as children. Shaffer’s first novel, “The Wishing Game,” was loosely inspired by Gene Wilder’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” and her recent “The Lost Story” began as an unexpected cross between “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Lord of the Flies” that morphed into a romantic fantasy.

While these stories will likely feel familiar and cozy to bookworms, fellow Kentuckians will find some delightful bluegrass gems within the pages.

“The Wishing Game” features a chicken-fried Kentuckian as part of a contest called “The Utterly Impossible Scavenger Hunt.” “The Lost Story,” released this month, has a scene set in Bernheim Forest, except Shaffer’s version is home to Real giants instead of the large wooden sculptures we see 25 miles south of Louisville.

Shaffer is a native of Owensboro, a graduate of Centre College in Danville and a homeowner in Louisville, so he is a Kentuckian through and through.

She is also a national bestselling author and we will likely hear more from her. She has a book deal with Penguin Random House for at least two more novels.

The afternoon before the July 16 release of “The Lost Story,” Shaffer had 80 pre-sold copies to sign for a launch party at Carmichael’s Bookstore on Frankfort Avenue. She and her husband, fellow bestselling author Andrew Shaffer, had planned to lug several copies from her allotment to the store, fearing they would run out during the event. Shaffer’s wistful magic has quickly captivated readers and placed her name alongside some of the best titles in the country. The Louisville author is a Book-of-The-Month Book of the Year Finalist, a USA Today Best Seller and a #1 Barnes and Noble Bestseller.

Yet she sat on the phone for about half an hour and told me a very different story than the long-awaited ‘The Lost Story’. Her own story.

Just as Shaffer’s novels appeal to magic-hungry readers who believe in stories so much that many still quietly hope their Harry Potter Hogwarts acceptance letter arrives, this vibrant new chapter in her writing career was also born of something broadly relatable. She had been thinking about the idea for “The Wishing Game” for nearly five years, but the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic ripped the story out of her.

Specifically, her 21-year-old cat Honeytoast held out for her and her husband during the shutdown and reopening of society. She passed away right around the time they got their first vaccine, leaving the Shaffers heartbroken and still reeling from the ongoing earthquake of the pandemic.

During those trying months, Shaffer needed as much the joy she found in creating the wondrous Clock Island, home to a wish-granting Mastermind in “The Wishing Game,” as she did something lighthearted to read to her growing fan base.

“This is about the power of books to help us through dark passages in our lives,” Shaffer told me. “I think that’s why people latched onto them so much, as we came out of lockdown and the pandemic.”

The whimsical, hopeful tale was unlike anything Shaffer had ever published before, but it was hardly her first foray into storytelling. She has published 35 romance and erotica titles, including the popular “The Original Sinners” series, under another pen name, Tiffany Reisz. After more than a decade of churning out about four romance novels a year, she was ready for a change. “The Wishing Game” was such a success when it hit shelves in 2023 that now, with the support of her publisher, she says she can “send Tiffany to a farm upstate” and step Meg into a more family-friendly spotlight.

The older you get, the closer you get to your childhood, she told me. In recent years, she’s started returning to the books she used to love. The idea for “The Lost Story” came in 2018, when she reread William Golding’s 1954 novel “Lord of the Flies.” She was saddened to rediscover the characters Ralph and Jack, who are stranded on an island after a plane crash. She wanted to know what happened to the boys, 15 or 20 years after they survived.

“When you’re young, you want to be grown up, and when you’re older, you want to be young again,” she explained. “I read middle grade books, and I miss that feeling. I’m an old married woman now, and I miss sitting by my window in a summer rainstorm, reading ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and eating ice cream like I did so many summers in Owensboro.”

As fascinated as she was by “Lord of the Flies,” she couldn’t publish a sequel to a novel that wasn’t in the public domain. So she put the book back on her shelf, next to the box set of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

Then, in an almost Hollywood-esque way, she said, she had a Eureka moment. She realized that if she took inspiration from both classic stories, and rearranged their origins, she had the framework for what would become “The Lost Story.”

“Writers are vultures and we steal every good idea we find,” she told me with teasing sincerity.

She submitted the first 20 pages as an audition for a writing workshop hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo. She was accepted. Six years and many drafts later, the famed author had put a blurb on the cover of her book.

“This is the book you’ve been waiting for,” Russo says on the cover.

At Carmichael’s Bookstore’s recent launch event, her Kentuckiana fans agreed.

“It rekindles your love of reading,” said Willie Graham, one of the lucky few in the audience who had already read an advance copy of “The Lost Story.” “It’s a fairy tale for adults and all kinds of readers. You go through a roller coaster of emotions and then come out on top after reading this book.”

Of the 130 books Graham has read this year, she says “The Lost Story” is easily in her top three.

Donna Reidel loved “The Wishing Game” so much that she had to reread parts of it. The retired Jefferson County Technical College professor reads four books a week, and she says, frankly, few move her as much as Shaffer’s work.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it made me believe in fairy tales again,” Reidel told me.

Since Shaffer wrapped up “The Lost Story,” she’s turned her attention to her third book under the name Meg Shaffer. It doesn’t have an official title yet, but just as “The Wishing Game” and “The Lost Story” may sound familiar to readers, she suspects this one will too. This time around, she’s venturing into mysteries, drawing inspiration from the famous “Nancy Drew” mystery series. Eventually, she wants to continue “The Lost Story,” too, she said. She didn’t leave a cliffhanger at the end, but there’s room for more if her readers ask for a sequel or two.

While there are certainly elements of fantasy in Shaffer’s stories, Shaffer’s ability to enchant her audience comes largely from the nostalgia and feeling that comes through in her stories.

So before we hung up the phone last week, I tried to tap into that magic one more time.

In “The Wishing Game,” the Mastermind says, “The only wishes that ever come true are the wishes of brave children who keep on wishing, even when it seems like no one is listening, because there is always someone, somewhere.”

“So what are you craving right now?” I asked Shaffer, with only a few hours to go until the premiere of “The Lost Story.”

“That’s a good question,” she said to me.

Then she paused thoughtfully and said, “I hope that the readers who need ‘The Lost Story’ will find it, because I think if they find it, they’ll be glad they found it. … There’s a reader out there who will appreciate this book on a very, very deep level, and I just hope they find it.”

Magic appears in literature in so many different ways.

It doesn’t have to be about finding a golden ticket to the chocolate factory, entering Narnia’s wardrobe or meeting a real giant in “The Lost Story” version of the Bernheimer Forest.

“There’s no better feeling than finding a book written just for you,” she concluded.

Columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful and occasionally a little strange. If you have something in your family, your city or even your closet that fits that description, she wants to hear from you. Say hello at [email protected].