“Whispers of the First Witch” is a short story about a girl who has lost her mom and follows the whispers that took her mother to hopefully find her again. It was a fun story to write and even more fun to work with Eli Cuaycong on this art piece to bring out the creepy factor of the story.
How this story came to be was with a picture prompt about a year ago! The picture we were given was of a piece of playground equipment called the witch’s hat. You can see that piece of equipment behind the creature. When I began to write the story, my mind took me back to when I was a child, and how we had the same equipment in our small town. I loved playing on it and used to imagine it taking me to other places when I would spin with it, especially at night.
In the story itself, the daughter sees her mother as she was before but does notice that her mother seems slightly different. For this art piece, we brought out what the mother really looks like inside as she is trying to coax her daughter to come to her with whispers.
This story takes place in The Kasverse and has strong ties to Wyreli, which will be visited in later stories and is where all of civilization, demons, witches, and the world truly started.
If you want to read this short story, you can click below to be taken to its page on my website.
I attended an event hosted by Mysterious Galaxy for the book Playing the Witch Card by Jenni Marchisotto.
I loved the beginning because the host asked Jenni to choose between spooky things. Apparently, she likes Sabrina the Teenage Witch over Hocus Pocus because Sabrina was her childhood. She loves Beetlejuice over Nightmare Before Christmas. She laughed about the fact that she has been a witch as an adult almost every Halloween. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix is one of her scariest reads. And she isn’t a big fan of scary movies because they stick to her. There is a scene in Independence Day that still haunts her. Blare Witch Project is the only scary movie she has sat through.
If anyone wants to learn about Jenni’s history with tarot cards and where they began, apparently, she was sent off to church with a friend because her parents wanted to take a vacation without her. Because her family wasn’t a big church family, she brought a tarot deck with her to church camp, thinking it would be cool. Hahaha. From then on, she went in and out of tarot cards as a young adult but really leaned into them as a full adult. She loves them because it makes her think of her life in full circle, like her past and what may be coming up. She doesn’t think of tarot cards as a fortune-telling thing but as a way to push someone to think about their situation differently.
She then gave a little history of tarot in general. She explained how they became more to the forefront of popularity during the time of the civil war and that they didn’t come from any particular tradition. They are European and came from games and spiritualism. So, she was very intrigued by how tarot cards can be whatever someone decides them to be. They have always been that way.
What makes the town special in her story is the town matriarch that keeps it looking very Halloweeny—in a spooky not scary way. She said one of the main characters has a steampunk Victorian Halloween vibe.
Jenni explains how she can’t name her characters until she knows their parents because she needs to think about what their parents would name them. So, to develop characters, she has to think about where the people came from and what the generations before may want from the characters. She has to dive into the past and figure out the whys.
There is the trope of fated mates in the story, but the main characters make the trope their own by tearing it up, throwing it aside, getting out, having a kid, and insisting on not being the fated mate. They made their own way.
Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow is a witch book recommendation by Jenni. She also enjoyed Cackle by Rachel Harrison.
Her absolute favorite trope is second-chance romance. She loves that because she loves the idea of people being fated to be together. Later, she would love to try the one-bed situation and a secret baby situation.
When asked if she would dive into another person from the town’s story, she said it depends on how things go with her publisher.
This was a fun and cute event. Thank you Mysterious Galaxy.
I attended a book event with Brookline Booksmith discussing The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson, who was very nice. I loved hearing about her ideology and passion. The interviewer, Lindsey Kelk, was also very passionate and described her love for Juno Dawson’s books as borderline unhealthy. Haha.
Apparently, Juno, who is from the UK, was in New York last week and, at the moment of this interview, was in Illinois networking and promoting her books. She is from the UK. The interviewer was also from the UK before she moved to the states and asked Juno what the most incredible thing she has eaten while in the States was. Juno said that she had Red Lobster for the first time and assumed there would be more lobster, but she had a great salmon salad. For the most terrifying eating experience in the States, she had hot Korean food in New York when she isn’t a girl that loves spicy food.
Then they started talking about the books. The series, which I haven’t read, is about five high school friends who are all powerful witches. The story then jumps to years later when they are in their 30s, all living very different lives and running different covens. There is also a trans witch. The first book deals with the division of the friendship group and then in book two they have to pick up the pieces.
I bought it right as they were discussing it. I was personally sold on witches in their 30s.
Juno explained how she has been in the industry for ten years and has realized she has had a lot of impact on LGBTQ+ people’s lives but didn’t have much commercial success. Now that she is having commercial success, it is interesting to her. Success came to her when she wrote all her favorite things in one novel because she wasn’t very optimistic about her success. But then, when she talked to booksellers, they were enthusiastic about her witch book, which is everything she wanted to say about the trans debate. She wanted to explore if covens are just a woman’s space and what happens if a trans witch is introduced into that world. She decided to explore this topic in fantasy, which she loves because fantasy helps take the edge off real issues. For her, she comes for the fantasy and witches and stays for the emotions.
Lindsey, who has been in the industry for twenty years and was an editor previously, complimented Juno and how her characters were done so well. She wanted to know how Juno started to make her characters. Juno said she tries to find a thing to love in each of them and that all the women in the books are the different sides of her personality.
I loved how nerdy Juno was. She LOVES Buffy, which I can highly relate to, and Doctor Who and more relatable shows I grew up with. She said she always has a rough guide when she plots, while her best scenes creep up on her. BUT the big twists were planned right from the beginning.
She is so excited to be able to go home after her tour, and it just be her and Her Majesty’s Royal Coven 3 for her to focus on. She didn’t want to start the conclusion of her series until she could sit down and focus solely on it.
There is a very good chance Her Majesty’s Royal Coven will be appearing on TV! It got picked up by Left Blank Pictures. So there are many exciting things in the work for Juno Dawson. I was very happy to have heard what this author had to say. Thank you, Brookline Booksmith.
Attended an event this evening with Oxford Exchange Bookstore to tackle in discussion the book The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henerson. It was such a great night to talk about this book which sounded like it definitely left us all unsatisfied and needing some real creepiness to talk about around Christmas. It was fun at the end to try to figure out a creepy winter book to read for December.
I am so thankful for this group of people we had tonight in the book club. It is hard when you read a book and you wonder if it is only you who saw certain things wrong with the book you read, but when a group of people come together who have the same issues with the same book, it gives you a certain satisfaction to know that your mind isn’t entirely broken.
One of the many things that we agreed on was how the book felt rushed. Absolutely everyone wanted more. We all felt like there was not enough world building, that the consequences for people were not enough, and that the book was too soft when it promised to be stimulating and moving in some way. Also, everyone wanted and needed to know and learn more about the witches.
No one liked the ending. It had confused everyone when it came to tying up the plot the way it had because the book had not led the reader in that direction at all. We all felt that things needed to be clearer throughout the story to make a more impactful ending and that the author needed to take the next step and dive deeper into things on multiple occasions. The book was set up with the opportunity to unpack so much, but instead broke away from things before they were thought into.
It was interesting though how this book tackled witches compared to many other witch books. This was brought up in conversation and it was something that I hadn’t even realized. This book was a nice break and gave us a view of someone looking at witches instead of looking into them. What I mean by that is that it had the main character getting affected by witches instead of really interacting with them. So that was a cool way to approach the witch trend.
I love to see differences in readers. Some of the differences in our opinions were about the romance in the book. I was not a fan along with a few others, but some mentioned that the romance kept them going and kept them wanting to read the book. What everyone agreed on though is that no one likes romances that go from zero to one-hundred within a few pages, which had happened in this book. Another difference was that although no one liked the explanation of the main character’s mom, they didn’t like that scene for two opposite reasons because they each viewed that scene in two completely different ways.
Lastly, I think it is amazing when everyone thinks that a certain scene was the most impactful one. The second labor scene was a favorite of everyone’s. It is always so incredibly fascinating how so many people can have different opinions about scenes or parts in books, but then other times everyone can come together to agree that a certain thing was their favorite part and they all thought and felt the same way. This is why I love reading and discussing!
During this event it sounded like we were all pretty much on the same page when it came to this book, which was fun to dive into and really just vent about how frustrating we were about not being satisfied after reading it. Thank you so much for the fun night Oxford Exchange!
Only let yourself settle when you know you are for sure alone. You never know what is hidden in the dark and the in-between spaces. Yes, there are some things only a witch can see, but you can always trust your own shuddering breath.
Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul 