The Flowerpot Witch Blog Tour finishes tomorrow, so I wanted to add my own blog post to the tour. My interview on Friday at Showboat TV with Judith Barrow gave me the opportunity to talk about many things, including why I write Witchlit and magical realism.
Have you read any fiction by Dion Fortune? I read Sea Priestess and Moon Magic and I knew I wanted to write more stories like those.
Fortune’s female lead is a strong, focused, determined woman and her magic is ‘real’. Destiny of Angels was my first novel and my female lead, Angel Parsons, uses the paths of the witch’s Qabalah to explore different ideas and perceptions of reality on the astral plane. I followed it with Wrath of Angels. I believed readers had had their fill of vampires and werewolves and would appreciate real people and real magic but I struggled to market the books because they didn’t fit neatly into the established genres.
I needed a different approach…
In August 2013 we moved into the field of the house we were buying in Wales, waiting for the purchase to be completed.
Once we’d moved in, we discovered an ancient Bronze Age settlement site on a hill beside the house and we cleared our riverbank of brambles and nettles to give us access to the river via a number of secluded ‘beaches’. I took inspiration from the Welsh landscape and penned the first book in the Standing Stone Series, Home for Christmas. These books were more accessible to readers, giving them a story of three women linked across time and space by the standing stone. In there time of most need, the women ask for help and it is given in the form of guidance from the goddess.
And then there was Witchlit! Inspired by a short story I was asked to pen for a possible anthology, Lizzie Martin, my protagonist, sprung into my mind and the Wendy Woo Witch Lit Series book 1, The Naked Witch was created for her. These books are about a real witch who uses magic in her every day life.
Defining and publicising Witchlit is my mission, introducing readers to my stories and others who write this wonderful, exciting, new and sexy genre. We want to start a Witchlit revolution!
You can join the revolution by adding @Witchlit1 to all your magical tweets and be sure to follow us on Twitter…
and my personal account https://twitter.com/WendyWooauthor
Witch Lit is contemporary, magical realism, where the magical and the mundane co-exist. The stories are gritty and believable while magic is sprinkled through the stories, offering the reader a new perspective on reality.
Unlike Chick Lit, Witch Lit women do away with the sweet, sickly or fluffy. Their passion, determination and creativity shine through the stories, though none are averse to a well-rounded buttock or a chiselled jaw. Witch Lit isn’t anti-men but Witch Lit women’s lives don’t revolve wholly around their presence or absence.
You do not need to be pagan or a witch to enjoy these stories!
I’ve had a lot of fun on the Blog Tour, meeting and chatting to new people and sharing my passion for writing, dancing and magic with bloggers and readers. If you’d like to stay in touch, why not sign up for my newsletter?
http://wendysteele.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=bd3cc38cba01c2dea4a5f386f&id=6210056252
Or you can use the link ‘Sign up to Wendy Woo’s Round Robin here!’ on the Home page.
You’ll receive a link to a FREE story, the one I was telling you about, the story that links everything I’d written before, with the new Lizzie Martin Witchlit stories.
Why not begin your journey into witchlit today?
You can find all my books via my Amazon author pages
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wendy-Steele/e/B007VZ1P06/ref
and for my friends across the pond http://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Steele/e/B007VZ1P06/ref
Join me to heal and inspire, spreading ripples of warm heartedness and love into the local community and the world. Bright blessings xx
Wendy Steele 