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Conjuring Love at Second Sight: A Guest Post by F.T. Lukens

By F.T. Lukens / April 28, 2025 at 1:59 am

Going from powerless to all-powerful overnight isn’t for the weak — just ask Cam. When he has a clairvoyant vision of a gruesome murder, he knows high school just got way more complicated. Read on for an exclusive guest post from author F.T. Lukens on writing Love at Second Sight.

Hardcover $19.99

Love at Second Sight

By F.T. Lukens

In Stock Online

Hardcover $19.99

When a teen has an unexpected vision about a future murder, he must juggle newfound interest from the supernatural community with trying to prevent the murder from happening in this “riveting” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) new romantic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author F.T. Lukens.

Sometimes all it takes is the small seed of an idea to take root and then, with a little push, it can bloom into a story an author feels compelled to write. As for myself, that is how So This Is Ever After and Spell Bound were born—one from a chat with a fellow author and the other from a ‘what if’ conversation with my brother. From there, the inspiration spiraled and after several months of plotting and writing, those ideas became books.

That absolutely did not happen with Love at Second Sight.

Unfortunately, the premise and plot didn’t fall into my brain completely realized. There wasn’t a singular spark of creativity that flared into life and then burned onto the page in a wonderful explosion of imagination. It was a slow process of creation from many small bursts of inspiration from different sources.

The first was a conversation I had with my grandfather several years ago about ghosts. He was a gruff, down-to-earth, realistic man and didn’t strike me as someone who believed in ghosts. But that chat we had over coffee spurred me to research ghosts, which led to mediums. And down the rabbit hole I went, gathering information about all the different variations of psychic powers.

The second came from a nudge from my editor. She mentioned wanting a book with the same vibe as a particular paranormal television show. I had already watched that show religiously, but research was a valid excuse for a rewatch. And of course, that led me to other shows in the same vein. Subsequently, another nugget of inspiration lodged itself into my brain.

The third was a conversation with an author friend at a convention. We were bored, as we had a few hours to kill. So, we brainstormed together, and the characters of a potential book began to develop. And those sparks from my grandfather and my editor influenced the character creation. Could I pair a psychic with a werewolf? Could I add a medium and a witch? How and why would they interact? What could be the source of the tension?

And the fourth bit of inspiration came from elementary school me. I loved Nancy Drew books as a child. My oldest sister had a whole set—except volume 1, that was somehow missing—and I read every single one. Additionally, my mother was a huge fan of Murder, She Wrote and we only had one tv. Thus, my background with mysteries also crept into the creation of the book.

All these fragments of ideas coalesced into one big idea which eventually became Love at Second Sight. A book about a teen psychic who has a witch best friend and werewolf love interest. Their friend group includes a girl who sees ghosts, a human encyclopedia, and a boy with plant-magic, and they all must work together to solve a mystery. See? It’s all in there.

I’m a firm believer that inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes, it’s a bolt of lightning, and other times, it’s a gradual build. In the case of Love at Second Sight, it only took me a little time… okay, several years… (decades if we’re really counting)… to piece it all together.