Wendy Steele is a writer, dancer, healer and advocate of love and kindness to all living things on this magical planet, including the earth herself. I met her years ago via Facebook during one of those mad rushes for author page follows, and we haven’t looked back. She’s a friend and confidante as well as a great beta reader. She has her own blog which includes posts about her books, her dancing, her life journey and her whole-food, plant-based diet. You can find it on her web site here. (And have I mentioned she lives in Wales? I am so jealous.)
Hart: Your work falls predominantly in the Witch Lit genre. What attracted you to that genre? Do you read more books in that genre, or do you indulge in genres outside your specialty?
Wendy: I read both inside and outside my speciality. After devouring Moon Magic and The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune, I wanted more books about real people and real magic, but I couldn’t find any, so I decided to write them myself.
I’d already penned over 100k words of another novel I knew needed work, but I had a new idea and two years later, I published Destiny of Angels (the first book in The Lilith Trilogy), the story of Angel Parsons, a successful woman despite a difficult past, who returns to the scene of her childhood trauma to face the perpetrators and offer them the chance of redemption.
I enjoy historical fiction, mysteries and fantasy, but shy away from crime and violence.
H: With Witch Lit being a genre based more in the feminine, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?
W: Female characters in fiction are sometimes the heroes we know they can be, but like the film industry, there are fewer “juicy” parts for women. Often a woman still needs a man to save the day.” I write about women who have confidence and belief in their own lives and don’t need a man to define them.
H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?
W: If you’d asked me last year I would have said “yes, writing time is scheduled,” but I’ve started 2019 in a different mindset.
Book four of my six part Lizzie Martin Series is written, leaving me two more to write, but I want them to be right and I’ve a lot of loose ends to carefully tie up. With plans needing to be put in place for work on our property, a new dance class and expansion of our dance performance wise, I’m writing short stories, articles and blog posts while I get plans underway and get through the paperwork.
I’ve attempted novel writing before under pressure and I get exhausted and run down, so I’m being kind to myself. I’ve handed in my latest story, “The Butterfly Door,” for the Witch Lit anthology, and finishing another for Zimbell House at the moment.
H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?
W: I love research! At my twenty minute careers interview when I was sixteen, I grasped the card marked ‘BBC Researcher’ and thrust it before the teacher, but she suggested I become a secretary and got married instead!
Research is a big part of my writing process. I may not have visited every place I write about, but most of them, and when my MC (main character) needs to instigate a spell, prayer or ritual, if I haven’t personal experience, I’ll scour books for ideas, often performing the spell or prayer myself first to see how it feels.
While researching The Lilith Trilogy, I walked the kabbalah paths before writing about them.
H: Do you have a current release you’d like to promote? Tell us about it.
W: My latest book is book three of the Lizzie Martin Series, The Flowerpot Witch, but why not start at the beginning? The Naked Witch is available as an ebook for less than the price of a skinny vanilla spice latte. Enjoy.
H: Thanks, Wendy. It’s been great talking with you.
