Illustration by Mark Zug
I will always remember when I first met Marcia. I had begun writing something that, at first, I called DRAGON MAGYK. After a few pages in I realised it was not so much about dragons and much more about a family—the Heap family. This was my first venture into writing a full length novel and its development was what you might call … organic. Possibly even a little chaotic like the Heap family themselves. I liked the Heaps a lot and found them intriguing but it felt like the story was becoming just a little too … Happy Families. It was in grave danger of getting cute. They were so thoroughly nice. Silas Heap had, at great risk to himself, rescued a baby from imminent death. Sarah Heap was a wonderful, if a little chaotic Earth Mother and they had pulled themselves out of despair after their seventh-born child had ‘died’. And all their little boys were gorgeous. All very nice, but I felt there was something missing.
The grit in the oyster.
Enter Marcia Overstrand.
I woke up with her name in my head one rainy morning in Cornwall and I had an impression of someone in flowing purple robes striding across a windswept beach. Yes, I know, over a strand. She was just a little bit irritable and seemed impatient with how the book was going. No one else knew I was writing it at the time, apart from my agent, who had immediately forgotten I’d ever, rather tentatively I expect, mentioned it. And so, to have Marcia suddenly present, interested and indeed impatient with how things were going was just what I needed.
She strode into that book—by now called just plain SEPTIMUS HEAP—and shook us all up. She brought in humour too, because most times I wrote Marcia she was annoyed about something at some point. And that always made me smile. The first time we meet her is early one morning when she is being irritable with various inanimate objects. Marcia is clearly not a morning person. She yells at the mirror, who is bad at maths and even worse when stressed about maths (I have so much empathy with that mirror) and then she terrifies the stove, which can’t get itself to light in time before she strides into the kitchen.
Apart from understanding immediately that Marcia is a force to be reckoned with—and then some—we see that clothes and how they form her image are so important to her. In chapter 4 of the US hardback of MAGYK pretty much the first thing we see when we meet Marcia is what she is wearing. We just know she has carefully chosen every piece.
Her purple double silk cloak was lined with the softest indigo-blue angora fur. It fell gracefully from her broad shoulders and gathered itself obediently around her pointy feet. Marcia’s feet were pointy because she liked pointy shoes, and she had them specially made. They were made of snakeskin, shed from the purple python that the shoe shop kept in the backyard just for Marcia’s shoes. Terry Tarsal, the shoemaker, hated snakes and was convinced that Marcia ordered snakeskin on purpose.
Marcia knows how important it is that she looks and feels good. It might look like vanity, but it’s not. It’s about power. Power in the image she chooses to project. We will see (one day, I promise) how she first encountered this at age sixteen with a beautiful coat she was given by a certain Esther Hathilly. But by the time we meet her in MAGYK, Marcia is well versed not only the power of purple, but the power of feeling good. And looking great.
Today she needed to look impressive. Impressive and just a little scary. Well, quite a bit scary if necessary. She just hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that when I had message from Eilidh Scheuerl about her student costume project and how she wanted to feature costumes for Marcia in her Performance Costume Show at Edinburgh College of Art, I was thrilled. It’s just wonderful to know that Marcia has inspired a costume designer in the making. And I am wishing Eilidh a fabulous show: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/eca-performance-costume-shows-2026-4831357 and a brilliant career ahead of her. Anyone who can design trousers like this deserves to go far…
Noa. Photographer: Sally Jubb. Costume by @eilidh_scheuerl_art
My favorite fictional character! When I was a kid, I used to walk briskly from class to class at school, pretending I was Marcia on an important mission. She gave me confidence I didn’t have before.
Always gonna ride for Marcia. She’s such a layered and complex character! Even reading this series as a kid she stuck out to me so much as both a powerhouse and also the type of woman who gives tough love—one of the best kinds in a lot of cases.
Also that costume design is SO COOL! It’s literally perfect Marcia everything about it is beautiful I cannot stop looking!
P.S. thank you for giving me a lifelong obsession with the color purple, it’s my favorite thing ever.