Unexpected Questions with Caitlin Rozakis

New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Rozakis writes fantasy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart. Her debut novel is DREADFUL, but turned out not to be dreadful at all. Her next book, THE GRIMOIRE GRAMMAR SCHOOL PARENT TEACHER ASSOCIATION, is coming from Titan Books in May 2025.

Marketer by day and writer by night, she has the amazing superpower of causing lab techs to say, “I’ve never seen it do that before!” Which is part of why she left her original field of mechanical engineering and now spends her days explaining in clear English why it can, in fact, do that. After that incident with the murderous robot, everyone is happier this way. After getting her now-useless degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton University, Caitlin has had too many career changes, including mechanical engineering (cut short after the murderous robot incident), finance (amortizing tequila receivables is not as fun as drinking tequila), and the American Museum of Natural History (who knew emus had birth certificates?). Now she specializes in tech marketing and lives in Jersey City with her husband and son.

If you were transported into one of your books as a character, what kind of character would you be and what kind of adventures would you have?

I’m not sure I’m NOT Vivian from The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. OK, my kid isn’t a werewolf but geez, the PTA is brutal! I love the whole world I built for Grimoire–urban fantasy always involves secretive shadowy mages running around with enormous arcane power at their fingertips, but I love the idea of these fantastically powered folks still have to deal with all the same day-to-day crap the rest of us do. Casting fireballs isn’t going to help when your kid is heartbroken from not getting a turn on the slide (especially when all the other parents can also sling fireballs) or help you get all the crap on the back-to-school supply list. I actually ran an RPG for my group in which they were all middle-aged mages in the same town where Grimoire is set, trying to go about their days with the ability to warp reality, in which those abilities were mostly useless. Highlights included:

– The class pet escaped at back to school night! The class pet turned out to be a shapeshifted cockatrice. Also, everyone ended up on a fundraising committee.

– Rudy needs a couch! The couch is haunted.

– The mages go to Costco! Someone has slipped shrooms into the stuffing samples. People see snakes (hallucinatory). People see snakes (that were garden hoses until mages got to them). A were beaver builds a dam out of patio furniture in the aisle.

If you were stranded on a deserted planet with only one book to read, but it turned out to be one of your own, how would you feel?Really pissed. I already have those imaginary people living in my head to keep me company, I want someone ELSE’s imaginary people in my head to keep me company.

If you had to choose between being a mermaid or a dragon, which would you pick and why?Dragon, duh. My hair gets really tangled when it’s wet, scuba diving is really cool but the pretty colors are only visible for for the first 30 feet or so and then it starts getting kinda drab, and mermaids very rarely get to eat anyone at all.

If you could swap lives with any character from one of your books for a day, who would it be and what would you do?I’d like to say I’d like to be Valevna, the extremely seductive and self-aware evil sorceress from Dreadful, but I’m not sure I’ve got the chutzpah to pull it off. One of my favorites in Grimoire is Mrs. Fairhair, the steely matriarch of the local werewolf clan. I think I would go have a very proper afternoon tea and absolutely terrorize the poor wait staff with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a strategic sniff.

If you were to write a fantasy-themed cookbook, what kind of recipes would you include?I love the idea of doing a cookbook for Orla, the not-actually-very-good goblin cook from Dreadful. It would be something similar to Dylan Hollis’ Baking Yesteryear (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/baking-yesteryear-b-dylan-hollis/1142960962), where half the recipes are reasonable things and half are absolutely terrible ideas that no one should ever make. A range from a perfectly lovely afternoon tea, to tasty-yet-horrifying gingerbread cockatrices, to larks’ head (not tongue, whole head) pie. The climax would be an entire bread-castle with sugar glass flames and little shortbread people fleeing and dying.

If you could travel to any alternate universe where a different version of yourself exists, what do you think your other self would be like?It would be pretty interesting to see how things would have turned out differently if I’d stayed in engineering, or stayed in museums. Not sure how I’d look with a goatee, though. (I know, I know, mirror universe women always do sexy leather, but I’m more entertained by the goatee.)

If you had to choose between fighting 100 duck-sized robots or one robot-sized duck, which would you pick and why?

So in college, I built a roughly duck-sized robot that kind of attacked the TA. It wasn’t very competent, but it was heavy enough and the climbing claws caused some…issues. I’m not sure 100 of them would be a fun time for anyone involved. I’m also going to point out that robots come in sizes from almost nano up to industrial construction robots, so I’m gonna assume we’re talking about, say, a drone-sized duck. I will feed it frozen peas. We will be friends. (Don’t feed ducks bread, it’s bad for them.)

If you were a character in a fantasy RPG, what character class and abilities would you have and how would you level up?

Oh, I am so very much a bard. Singer/storyteller with more of a jack-of-all-trades thing rather than a specialization? Hi! (I’m told I’m also unusually extroverted for a writer.)

I’m gonna level up via the ultimate bard power move – KARAOKE.

If you had to choose one of your books to be turned into a cheesy made-for-TV movie, which one would it be and who would you want to play the lead roles?

…I did. My contemporary romance Leah’s Perfect Christmas literally just aired as the Hallmark Channel original Leah’s Perfect Gift, starring Emily Arlook, Evan Roderick, and Barbara Niven. It was really fun! They changed enormous swaths of the story, but I was expecting that (it’s Hallmark, they have certain tropes they like). And I got to spend two days on set this past fall!

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So if you haven’t picked up a copy of Dreadful yet, you should totally do that. But the next exciting thing coming up is the May 27 release of The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, which is available for pre-order now! It’s Big Little Lies goes to magic school. A lot of us grew up dreaming of being whisked away to learn how to be a wizard/werewolf/whatever. But now that we’re grown-ups, we’re realizing exactly how much drama a bunch of spell-casting anxious parents would be. You put WHAT on the back-to-school supply list? And there’s a WHAT is living in the school basement?

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