There’s something endlessly fascinating about witches.
Whether they are fairy tale villains or femme fatales; maidens, mothers or crones; mentors or conspirators or everyday women being persecuted for their uppity attitudes, witches make for great stories. And, across years of reading, I’ve met some fantastic witch characters.
Lolly Willowes. Eva Ernst. The Gale women. Paige Winterbourne. America’s Routewitches. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. Baba Yaga. Diana Bishop. Gillian and Sally Owens. Minerva, Courtney, Agnes, Nahri, Jadis, Miryem, Penny, Ekaterina, Jane, Alexandra and Sukie. Mrs Fairfax and Madame Olympia. I could go on, but I’d better stop.
No, wait… I finished reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir last night (hot damn, what a book), and I must add Harrowhark Nonagesimus to this list. I mean, necromancy is a specialised kind of witchcraft and Harrow is… well, she’s horrible and she’s awesome. The best kind of witch.
Doubtless, you’ve got your own favourite fictional witches – please share because I’m always open to reading recommendations. And today’s final recommendation from me is a foretelling of lovely witchy things to come.
It’s a toffee-dipped apple, seeping poisoned juices from its rotten core.
It’s a cold wind blowing no good, whispering words that curdle on the edge of comprehension.
It’s a lonely road and a sullen, flickering light, glimpsed through dead branches, bone-bleached by the full moon.
In short, it’s GOOD SOUTHERN WITCHES.
Editor J.D. Horn of Curious Blue Press has assembled a clever coven of tales about witches from the south-eastern states of America. As the blurb says:
This collection is a love letter to the witch, in all her glorious and fearsome incarnations, because—you have to admit—even when she’s wicked, she’s still damned good.
You want witches? Good Southern Witches has “Baba Yaga reimagined as a Southern socialite, Kentucky granny witches, Texas water witches, Tennessee tricksters, North Carolina guardians, Georgia killers, Mississippi virgins, and Louisiana whores.”
What’s more, this anthology has Tace Bolley, my very own southern witch, who has a tale to tell about Uncle Amos Polkinghorne’s apple orchard which, as she puts it, “ain’t so sweet, neither.”
Publication date is 13 April 2021 and you can pre-order your Kindle copy on Amazon and your paperback copy soon.
I’m looking forward to seeing Tace in company with her southern sisters and reading the hell out of this anthology to discover a new batch of fabulous fictional witches.
(My banner image was cropped from a photo by Susann Mielke which she shared on Pixabay).