Hey gang, your ol’ chuckle headed pal Doom here with something extra special for our Anniversary week, an interview!
Morgan Baden is the best selling author of five novels (with a sixth coming this summer), including Daphne & Velma: The Dark Deception & Daphne & Velma: Buried Secrets.
Recently, I had the chance to talk to her about her history and work on the Scooby-Doo franchise.
Doom: First off, just for background, I’m curious what your relationship with Scooby was before you took over the series? Did you keep up with the DTV movies and shows, was it something you fondly looked back on from childhood, or a mix of both?
Morgan Baden: My siblings and I were big Scooby fans when we were kids in the 80s – so much so that I was still dressing up as Velma for Halloween when I was in college two decades later! (The great thing about my Velma wig was that it was also a perfect match for dressing up as Agent Scully one year, too.) The entire Scooby universe has always been kind of ever-present throughout my life; it’s just such a significant part of the pop culture universe. Because of that, the brand has always loomed large for me, and I’ve always kept up with its new releases.
Doom: What was the process that led to you taking over the series? Did an offer come in or did you hear rumblings of the first book and reach out?
Morgan Baden: I can’t answer this without sharing a fun background fact: I worked at Scholastic for 12+ years! During my tenure there, I’d developed lots of incredible relationships, including with the editorial teams, so when I left in 2019 just before my first book, a YA novel called The Hive, was released, I made sure to spread the word that I was open for writing projects. A few months after my departure, my editor for these books, Beth Dunfey, reached out. I actually didn’t know Beth at the time, but she was looking for a writer for the series and had heard my name through an internal referral. I was thrilled to get asked to write these stories!
Doom: You were able to write two books in this series, with the last one laying the groundwork for, at the very least, one more. Pie in the sky, how many more installments did you envision writing? And can you share any details about those unrealized plots, specifically what you had planned for the overarching Mystery Of Crystal Cove/The Vanishing?
Morgan Baden: Real pie in the sky? I’d want to see this series turn into something like The Baby-sitters Club, with hundreds of titles and spinoffs! (A girl can dream.) But more realistically, I would have loved at least another couple of books. There’s something really special about being able to tell stories set in the Scooby world from a female perspective, and the trilogy didn’t offer enough space to really explore all the angles of that. And, as you note, I didn’t get to fully wrap up the “big” core mystery that was laid out in the first book. Part of that is the nature of writing a series; you have to balance the cliffhangers without knowing if there will be more books.
One thing I was really looking forward to with future books was digging more into the Hex Girls. They’re such a fan favorite and I had so many ideas for how they could disrupt the dynamics of the main Scooby gang. I mean, can you imagine the fun and intrigue if Daphne or Velma joined the band for a book or two?!
Doom: Could you possibly share, or even just tease, a bit of what the big overarching mystery would have been?
Morgan at Universal studios with Mystery Inc.
Morgan Baden: I wish I could, but honestly, I just hadn’t gotten there yet! A few different ideas percolated while I was writing the books, but nothing concrete had been decided. That’s why it’s such a solid premise for a mystery – there were so many different directions it could have gone.
Doom: I know Covid kinda screwed everything up, but how did you find out that the third book was going to be the final installment? Were you given any heads-up at all?
Morgan Baden: That period of time is kind of fuzzy for me, since it was so stressful in so many ways. The first thing that happened was that I got notified that Buried Secrets (book 3) would be delayed, which wasn’t a huge surprise – in 2020 and 2021, lots of books were getting delayed – but then the new publication date got pushed back…twice. At one point, there was a distinct possibility that Buried Secrets wouldn’t be released at all. Somewhere between the third and fourth delay was when I realized there wouldn’t be any more installments, just because it became kind of obvious. Of course, since then, there’s been a ton of new Scooby media – Mindy Kaling’s “Velma,” the new live action series at Netflix…So who knows? Publishing is always full of surprises!
Doom: How deep had you gotten into planning Book 4, if at all?
Morgan Baden: I had some ideas, but I hadn’t outlined or written a synopsis. So I hadn’t gotten very far, but I was doing some thinking.
Doom: Unless she’d prefer to stay anonymous, this is a mystery that’s been in the Scooby fan’s minds since book 1 dropped. I was wondering if you could share if you know who Josephine Ruby is and, possibly, could you share that info with us?
Morgan Baden: What do you mean? The author is Josephine Ruby. 🙂
Doom: Understood. Ya can’t blame me for trying. Haha
To wrap up, are there any other major franchises you’d like to take a run at?
Morgan Baden: So many! And they vary wildly. Writing some kind of contemporary spin on Sweet Valley High would be the ultimate, but so too would writing anything set in The X Files ecosystem. I’ve recently been outlining a modern, dark take on an iconic character that is now in the public domain, so maybe I’ll have news to share about that soon.
Doom: And do you have any current projects you’d like to share with our audience?
Morgan Baden: In September, the first book in my new middle grade series was released, called Famous Anonymous! Similar to Daphne and Velma, it involves four friends rallying around a project – but in this case, it’s about two sets of middle school siblings who accidentally become famous on social media…only they’re in costumes in their videos, so no one in real life knows it’s them. They have to navigate what it means to be secretly famous, and how that impacts their friendships and their lives. The sequel, Famous Anonymous: Undercover Summer, comes out this July!
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We’d like to thank Morgan for taking the time for this interview.
Be sure to follow her on Instagram to keep up with what she has coming in the future.
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Check out our books, with our original horror short story collection, The Camping Trip And Other Stories, our non-fiction book, Doomed: The Collected Essays And Reviews Volume 1, or our collection of original Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories, Brimming With Adventure: Thrilling Tales Of The Nerd Blitz!
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And finally, given the state of the world, do what you can to leave the world a little bit better than you found it.
As difficult as that may be currently, it can have an impact far greater than you know.
Until next time, stay safe out there, gang.
