Exclusive Interview
Laura Thalassa on How ‘Curse That Binds’ Sheds New Light on ‘Bewitched’ Romantasy Series
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Laura Thalassa’s Bewitched series.]
Laura Thalassa — who’s behind the BookTok favorite Four Horsemen series — is no stranger to writing enemies-to-lovers romantasy. While her new “passion project,” The Curse That Binds, is in many ways a continuation of what she knows best, it’s also a step in a completely different direction.
The Curse That Binds is the latest addition to Thalassa’s Bewitched series, but it stands apart in that it’s set thousands of years in the past. The first book follows a 20-year-old witch named Selene in the present day. Even though she mysteriously loses memories every time she uses her magic, she’s dead-set on being accepted into an academy to hone her abilities.
She’s almost achieved her goal, but one of the entry requirements is to go on a quest and connect with her powers. In a twist of fate, she stumbles upon the tomb of a sorcerer and former Sarmatian king, Memnon the Cursed. After Selene accidentally revives him, Memnon mistakes her for his wife, who imprisoned him 2,000 years ago. From then on, Selene has to deal with the vengeful sorcerer, all while trying to solve a string of murders on her new campus.
To find the culprit, Selene and Memnon enter a reluctant partnership, which continues into book two, Bespelled. Before the third book rounds out the series, Thalassa set out to explore where it all started: with Memnon and his queen, Roxilana. What was supposed to be be a 40,000-word prequel turned into a 120,000-word novel that reframes the events in the main books — and the complicated relationship at the heart of it.
Ahead of The Curse That Binds’ July 1 release, Swooon spoke with Thalassa about adding new context to Memnon and Selene’s story, switching gears to friends-to-lovers, and more.
I was looking on your Instagram and I saw you mentioned that you were writing Memnon and Roxilana’s backstory for yourself originally. At what point did you know that you wanted to share it with readers, beyond that short flashback that’s included in Bespelled?
Thalassa: I don’t know when I officially made the decision. I think it was after book two where I really felt like I could… I do a lot of character backstories just for myself. Just to understand who the characters are, what their past is like, what their motives are. Just for myself, to get a sense of who they are, so that when I write them, I stay true to character. This one, I just felt like the direction that the conclusion of the trilogy — now I don’t know if you’d call it a trilogy, but like the series — was going, I felt like it would be worth it to expand a bit on what happened in the past.
I know you’ve said it was first supposed to be a novella and then it kind of turned into, you know…
Thalassa: It turned into a lot longer than a novella?
Yeah, I’m curious what that process was like.
Thalassa: The main series Bewitched, Bespelled — I’m not going to say the last book’s name. I almost did. I always struggle with that. But when I was developing the story arc for the main series, that’s also when I developed this past between Memnon and in the present day, she’s Selene. And it’s a bit of a minor spoiler to say that she has another life in the past as this Sarmatian queen Roxilana. I felt like in order for me to understand Memnon, for instance, and why he’s so violent and why he’s very feral — I feel like he has a very feral edge — and kind of why certain things are the way they are, I really had to nail down things that happened in the past. And so it was definitely happening in development, like in parallel with the main books. But again, at the time, they were just kind of sketching out these events that happened. They weren’t fully fleshed out scenes at the time.
The research must have been really intense for this one, going so far into the past. Since you’ve done the present and the post-apocalyptic situation, what was it like switching it up with this book?
Thalassa: Yeah, this one was honestly so hard. I don’t write historical fantasy or just historical fiction. That’s not something I’ve done before. But I graduated college with a degree in archaeology, and that was my passion. I feel like a soft spot I have is for history. There’s certain things that, as I was writing, I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to have to look this up.” Not fun, interesting facts, but like, “Did doors have hinges? Did they eat with forks?” It was stuff I had to look up because I just wanted to know the context in which they were living.
That was kind of tedious because at least if you’re writing fantasy, you can make really interesting rules, but you don’t necessarily have to corroborate them. It can be based on the historical record, but if you get it a little wrong, you’re just like, “Well, it’s fantasy. It’s this totally made up world.” I will say, Roman history has a ton of recorded stuff. To where it made me sweat, because there are some things where I’m like, “Did I just make an assumption about this or is it written down somewhere?” Whereas by contrast, Sarmatians were a pastoral nomadic tribe, and they did not write down any of their own history. So there’s very little that’s known about them besides what’s in the archaeological record and what non-Sarmatian people wrote about them, which is not always flattering.
The other thing is I didn’t want to get bogged down in it. I felt like when readers read it, I didn’t want to be giving them history lessons. I wanted there just to be enough in the background so they kind of got the vibes, which also is kind of hard because you don’t want to info dump everything.
Because their relationship is at the core of it, and it’s just a different backdrop.
Thalassa: Yeah, that’s really what was important to me is just that they have this past together.
What was it like to write this less jaded, younger Memnon? Of course, he gets there by the end of the book, and he’s becoming more and more morally grey. What was it like going backwards with him?
Thalassa: It was super endearing. You’re taking away all of their armor that they have as a full grown individual and looking at who they were when they were younger and more vulnerable and made mistakes and all this stuff. And I feel like what was fun about him is that him being a sorcerer, one of the catches of his magic is that every time he uses it — specifically large quantities of it — he has to pay for that magical usage, and it kind of eats away at his conscience. So there’s this balance between using his power and trying not to lose the soft compassionate parts of himself. And he also happens to have a soulmate. It was just so fun, too, going back to this earlier version of him where he hadn’t… you actually see him before his magic even manifests. He’s always kind of had an edge to him, but he has a real soft heart at the center of it, specifically for Roxi.
Do you have a favorite moment or favorite scene? Why does it stand out to you?
Thalassa: There’s a lot of different scenes that I really, really love, but the one that came to mind was the first day they meet in person, but specifically when they’re alone together in their bedroom. They’ve been friends for a long time because being soulmates, they have a connection where they can hear each other’s thoughts. Not all of them, but the ones they deliberately send across to one another. They kind of have magical Instant Messenger. So for years before they met, they chatted and they’ve been friends and eventually fell in love with each other, even though they’d never met. She’s 18, he’s 22, something like that. It felt very much like first love and very vulnerable. I just loved it. I’ve never written a scene like that.
I love that one, too. And the wedding scene when Memnon chases Roxi down [as per tradition in his culture] is…
Thalassa: I had a lot of fun with that.
They have such good banter. I’m sure that’s so fun to write.
Thalassa: It’s really fun. Because at the end of the day, I’m like, this has got to entertain me. I will literally go through scenes and be like, “This is boring. I think I can either get rid of it or I have to make it better.”
Well, there are so many great scenes in this one. With The Curse That Binds, whether they’re starting the series with this one or they’re going into it after the first two, is there any insight about Roxi/Selene and Memnon’s relationship that you hope they take away from it?
Thalassa: Because it’s technically an optional book, I don’t necessarily feel like there’s anything anyone needs to take away from it. But I’m hoping that — especially if a reader has read the first book and the second book and then they read this one — they’ll read The Curse That Binds and suddenly it reframes everything that happened in the first and second books. I hope that, because I feel like some of the way Memnon acts in book one, I think people were like, “Why is this so needlessly cruel?” And I think when you read The Curse That Binds, you find that compared to some of the stuff that he’s pulled, he’s really, really holding back. Some of the things that he brings up that he’s frustrated by, you’re just like, “This guy. He needs to stop.” And like, when you read The Curse That Binds, you’re like, “Oh man, there’s a lot here that they went through that to him, how could this possibly all be erased?” His whole life revolved around it and around the relationship. And, yeah, if anything, having it reframed and casting the series in a slightly different light. I just love it, too, where in the main series, you get enemies-to-lovers, but then in the past it’s definitely friends-to-lovers.
And that’s kind of a switch up — friends-to-lovers — for you because I know you mostly do enemies-to-lovers in your books.
Thalassa: I’ll be honest, it was super hard. I love an enemies-to-lovers. I just love the tension between two characters. And one of the difficulties in The Curse That Binds was the fact that they’re not enemies. They’re never gonna be enemies. How do I make tension without making the relationship toxic? And so that was actually a huge challenge. I’m just very unused to writing friends-to-lovers, but it was fun.
You did a really great job. Their connection is so good in this, and I agree it added so much. It really changed how I viewed the original series.
Thalassa: I’m glad to hear that, especially because it’s funny, actually. I was really surprised when I started getting feedback from Bewitched, people really hated Memnon. And I was like, “What?” and I’m trying to figure it out. But it’s like, of course. They didn’t know any of the stuff that was going on in my own mind. He still does some really crappy things, objectively. But I think that I was like, wait, they don’t know… There’s a lot of backstory that I’m carrying with me about these characters that they have no idea.
I really started loving him in the second book, so I feel like it was a good progression. We don’t know why he’s acting this way in book one, and then in book two, we start to learn. Now we finally know everything.
Thalassa: Yeah, he made a wrong assumption, so I feel like in book two, he is groveling.
And I love that.
Thalassa: We love a good grovel, yeah.
Is there anything you can tease about book three and where their relationship is headed? I know it’s hush-hush because we still have a few months…
Thalassa: I can say that a certain someone who was the nemesis in the past will make an appearance. And they’ll have to deal with some 2,000-year-old unfinished business, but I will not say anything else.
It’s confirmed that it’s for 2026 release, right?
Thalassa: Yeah, it is.
I’m sure everyone’s so excited to get their hands on that, but they can eat up The Curse That Binds in between.
Thalassa: Hopefully this will satiate that. I’m a very slow writer, but I’m having a lot of fun. I’m about halfway done writing… I’m not going to say [the title]. I wanted to say it again. But I’m really excited to wrap the story up and give everybody their happily ever after.
At least we know there’s a happily ever after.
Thalassa: No, definitely. I’m definitely not someone that’s like, “Oh, by the way, they all died at the end.” The real world is harsh enough.
You can find Laura Thalassa on Instagram and check out her full catalog here.
