D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

writing

What the Heck Is “Witch Lit”? Meet Wendy Steele

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Today, I am thrilled to share one of my favorite people and authors with you all—the fab Wendy Steele. Wendy’s latest is The Naked Witch, and I’ve asked her to tell us a little about herself, her writing and this genre known as Witch Lit.

wendy
Hart: So what is Witch Lit?
Wendy: Borrowing the basis from the genre Chick Lit, heroine-centered narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists within a modern world, coping with work and home life and with a soupçon of humour, substitute ‘witch’ for ‘chick’.

H: Why Witch Lit?
W: Women read more fiction than men, so why not? Who wouldn’t want to read about a female protagonist who can destroy three coconuts on a shy…on a bad day? The basis for the genre may be borrowed from Chick Lit but you won’t find witches pining for love, though they’re not averse to a shapely buttock and a chiseled jaw line. For the past decade, magical realism has showcased vampires, werewolves and a popular school for witches. Now it’s time for real magic and real people.

H: Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
W: I’ve always come home from days out and holidays and written about my experiences. I dabbled with children’s stories and poetry in my twenties, was inspired by a writing workshop in my thirties and spent three years writing my first novel. My first published novel, Destiny of Angels—first book in The Lilith Trilogy, was in 2012. Since then, I’ve published a further novel, three novellas, had short stories published online and in anthologies and read my stories on my YouTube channel, Phoenix and the Dragon. My first Witch Lit novel, The Naked Witch, is available to pre-order.
I live in mid Wales with my partner and cats and am a member of the Cwrtnewydd Scribblers.
I teach tribal style belly dance and perform with Tribal Unity Wales.

H: You describe yourself as author, wise woman and goddess. What does that mean?
W: Though the three labels overlap, these words sum me up as a person. Author is writer, story teller, inspirer and teacher. Wise woman is dance teacher and witch, treading her own magical path. Goddess is woman, mother, writer, dancer and healer.

H: I spent several weeks in Wales many years ago, and I found it to be a rather magical place. What influence do the mysteries of Wales have on your writing—both of Witch lit and your other magical books?
W: Where I live has had a huge impact on my writing. I live on a hillside in mid Wales. Above me is a Bronze Age settlement site and below me, the River Grannell circuits my land. We have our own riverbank, a perfect place to sit and soak up the beauty of the Welsh landscape. I often sit on my ‘beach’ by the water, thinking or writing, allowing the river to bring me down ideas from the mountains. The idea for The Standing Stone book series came directly from my new home.


Welsh myths and legends have also played a part in my writing. The Mabinogion contains the stories of the past, the beginnings of the Taliesin traditions and stories. Some of the stories I knew, but many I read with fresh eyes. Storytelling traditions are important in Welsh culture, as are poetry and singing, and I love to include them in my work.
In Destiny of Angels and Wrath of Angels, the first two books in The Lilith Trilogy, Angel Parsons lives in the south of England but has a holiday home in Wales, big enough to invite her friends to join her for the Equinoxes and Solstices.
In my Witch Lit novels, Lizzie Martin in The Naked Witch (UK link) lives in Essex, but she discovers that the family she misses so much are living in Wales. In the second book, The Orphan Witch, Lizzie and her best friend, Louise set off on a road trip, travelling along the coast and through the mountains below Snowdonia.

H: Yummy. I’d love to hear more details about The Naked Witch (US link).

book-cover

W: Lizzie Martin lives in Romford with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Rowan. She enjoys her job as a receptionist and typist at an old established, family-run company. She clothes herself from charity shops in vibrant, joyful colours with matching headbands she makes herself. Colour is Lizzie’s armour, and she uses it to hold at bay the emotional angst caused by her ex-husband, Josh, whose girlfriend is barely out of her teens, her mother who has the sensitivity of a crocodile, and the big bad world from which she tries to protect her daughter. But today Edward Brown—her new boss—has asked Lizzie to ‘bare all’, and become more corporate. For Lizzie, swapping paisley for pin stripe is like asking a parrot to wear pea hen. Meanwhile, as Edward Brown retakes his position as head of the law firm, Lizzie has to choose between her job and her integrity, cope with an unexpected stay in hospital, continue seeking the truth about her father’s death and juggle two new men in her life. There is hope though. At the bottom of the garden is a little wooden shed that Lizzie calls Sanctuary. Within its warm and welcoming walls, Lizzie surrounds herself with magic.

H: Tell me, are there certain things a witch should carry about her person?
W: I can’t speak for every witch, of course, but a bottle of good lavender essential oil, safety pins, a notebook and pencil, a ginger sweet and a stone or shell from the beach are always in my handbag.

H: Do you have to be a witch or a pagan to enjoy Witch Lit?
W: Not at all! It’s always the story first for me, and Lizzie’s battle with her head and heart is a compelling one.

H: Where can we find out more about you and your stories?
W: My website is a great place to start www.wendysteele.com.

Further links to Wendy include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WendyWooauthor
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/destinyofangelsnovel/?fref=ts https://www.facebook.com/WendyWooBooks https://www.facebook.com/TheStandingStone
 Amazon author:
http://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Steele/e/B007VZ1P06/ref http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wendy-Steele/e/B007VZ1P06/ref
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=216391838&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
Goodreads author:http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6548666.Wendy_Steele
YouTube channel: The Phoenix and the Dragon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw3ee9CuNdek9ZC1Im8I_iA

The Shadows That Guide Me

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hoia-baciu-haunted-forest-romania

I am a seat-of-the-pants kind of author. I used to outline, then put all my scenes on individual cards, and only after that would I allow myself to start putting words to paper. It worked fine. It also stole a great deal of time from actually writing. To be fair, it did speed up the process of getting the words down, but there were always those scenes that ended up being something completely different from the original plan, necessitating changes in the subsequent outline/cards.

With my most recent book, Protector of Thristas, however, I had a few pages of notes and a minimal amount of 4×6″ cards when I began writing, and as I wrote, the notes grew and the cards stacked up until the entire story had unfolded on the page. I found this highly stimulating intellectually and creatively and decided that with the next book—my current work in progress—I would simply start writing, filling in the cards and the notes as the story evolved in my mind.

My muse has encouraged this behavior. She manipulates the characters and story like puppet shadows, allowing them to become real as they and their plot lines take full form on the page. These shadows swim around and through me while the story gains momentum, and I follow them, picking up their bits of ghostly threads to weave into the tale. The only downside to this method is that I spend half the story asking “How the heck does it end?” (Endings, after all, require setting up, and how can one set up what one doesn’t know yet?)

But here’s one thing I have learned about myself after writing four books—I always figure it out. Whatever “it” may be, the answer comes when it’s meant to come. And if the answer I get doesn’t fit the previously completed narrative, then I have to regroup, rewrite and run a little faster to catch up with the shadows who have moved on without me.

I love those shadow creatures, and I love hosting them as I tell the story as they’ve told it to me. Now, I’m not advising every writer to use this method. It’s chaotic as a box filled with kittens and twice as bloody if you let down your guard. But if you, like me, revel in the magic of that chaos, then you’ll understand how the shadows guide me.

One Book or Two?

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I have found myself recently running a back-and-forth in my head surrounding the efficacy of splitting the final book in the Lisen of Solsta series into two separate volumes. I’ve just passed the point where I would break it, and I certainly do not have enough “story” apparent in my remaining notecards.

books-glasses

But here’s the thing. The number of notecards left to be brought to life in the text has little relation to the amount of writing left to be done. My notecard system (previously described) continues on in an abstract configuration until I begin to narrow in on the sequence of events noted in a single card. Then that card, like a living cell, splits into two, into four, into eight—you get the picture.

So, do I have two books in this story? Or, will I end up with but one, slightly longer than the last but not long enough to split up? Stay tuned. Only time will tell.

Carrie on, Courageous Sister

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Two events stand out in my life from 1977—I read the third (and what I thought of as final) book in the Dune series, Children of Dune, and I saw Star Wars at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood on a Thursday afternoon with two friends. Both moments contributed to what eventually became my Lisen of Solsta series. The first because upon finishing it, I threw the book across the room and declared, “If Frank Herbert won’t write the book I want to read, then I will.” (Upon re-reading the book, I discovered it was actually pretty good when I didn’t make my personal expectations impediments to my enjoyment.)

As for Star Wars, what can I say? The ads and teasers left me thinking swashbuckler in space. Swords and young people swinging across chasms? I was on board before I ever saw it. Months later when I set out to write “my” story (you know, the one Frank Herbert didn’t write), I chose a female hero because I thought it was time for as many Princess Leias as there were Luke Skywalkers.

carrie-fisher

Carrie Fisher died today, and I’m one of thousands, if not millions, recording their feelings for posterity about this woman who stood proud and never attempted to hide her reality. And her reality was often brutal. Standing as an icon to geek-dom while still in her early twenties, struggling with addiction and then facing the diagnosis of bipolar disorder—she could have played her little violin, and all her fans would have fallen in line to pity her. But Carrie Fisher wasn’t a violinist, and she declined people’s pity. Instead she wrote. And what she wrote!

She wrote biographical novels about her relationship with her famous mother. She wrote memoirs about life in a brighter-than-light spotlight. She wrote one-woman plays detailing her battles with the iconic life of a princess, drugs and mental disease. Rather than run away from these things, she celebrated them with humor and fearless reflection.

I suffered a few losses of my own this year (previously documented), but when I learned of Carrie’s passing, although not unexpected, I cried and realized her loss leaves me as empty as those other losses do. May the Goddess bless her on this new leg of her journey, but damn it, I had so wished to read her take on flat-lining on a plane.

2016 Sucked in More Ways than you Think

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For most of my friends, 2016 will be remembered for the shock they felt when the candidate for president of the United States whom a good many of us felt was thoroughly qualified failed to get enough electoral votes to take office in January 2017. And, to be honest, that shocked me, too. For me, however, 2016 sucked for other reasons.

In September of 2015, my best friend was diagnosed with stage IV parotid gland cancer. Neck and mouth cancers are among the most difficult to treat because they are rarely discovered before they have metastasized (hence, the stage IV) and oncologists and other medical professionals tend to throw everything at the cancer (and the patient) because they apparently have no idea how to stop it.

My friend’s prognosis was six months from diagnosis. She began chemotherapy late in November and within a couple of days had what at first appeared to be a horrible reaction to the poison they’d pumped into her system. On a Sunday morning she called me, painfully distraught. “I feel so sick,” she said. “I can’t take care of the cats. You have to come and take them to the shelter.” And then she named a nearby shelter that she believed was open on Sundays. I asked her if she’d called her doctor. Being the stoic, controlled Midwesterner that she was, of course, she hadn’t. I told her to call the doctor and I’d figure something out with the cats.

When I hung up the phone, I came apart. She was so sick that she was ready to dump her beloved cats? How could she do that? And I was not going to take them to a shelter. I couldn’t. They’d be euthanized.  Given the fact that one was eight and the other thirteen or fourteen, they’d never get adopted. Hyperventilating and crying, I called my neighbor and asked her to go with me to my friend’s house. Then I called and begged my sister (who lived nearby) to take the cats on a temporary basis. I brought my cage to keep them in, and my sister, after conferring with her daughter, agreed.

We couldn’t catch the cats that morning. My friend had already headed to the ER at the on-call doctor’s insistence, and my neighbor and I retreated back to my house to regroup. In the early evening, my friend’s neighbor called me. She’d been to the hospital and seen my friend, and my friend had told her to tell me in no uncertain terms that when she got home there’d better not be any cats in the house. Frightened, feeling threatened by the effects of a disease that wasn’t even my disease, I headed back to her house, picking up my sister on the way. Two of my friend’s neighbors showed up, and they succeeded in corralling the cats, and my sister and I transported them (and the litter box—apparently part of the offending problem connected with the cats—along with their food) to my sister’s house.

It took two months to find a home for the cats together. My sister never once complained about caring for them or the intrusion they were on her life. But that’s my sister. In those two months, my friend came home after three days in the hospital where they discovered three masses in her brain—likely the guilty party in her aversion to the cats. Her second chemo treatment was delayed with the plan being to see how she did, and if she felt well enough after, the younger of her two cats would come home. (I didn’t understand that either. Why not both? Only a little extra work. But there was a lot I never understood.  It wasn’t my journey, and I could only watch.)

She had her second chemo treatment between Christmas and New Years. Unbeknownst to me and those treating her, she’d developed a severe case of diarrhea on Christmas Eve. She hid it from me to protect my anxious psyche; she hid it from her medical team because, I believe, she didn’t want to delay the chemo any longer. She was strong, determined, ready to take the cancer on again. After the second round of chemo (a cocktail, I might add, that consisted of three most potentially powerful anticancer drugs available), the diarrhea became so bad she ended up in the hospital and stayed for a week-and-a-half. She never went home again. From the hospital she went into “rehab,” and she stayed in that nursing home until her death eight months later. She survived just over a year after her diagnosis.

I had two directives.  The first was my own.  “Keep her safe.” That meant nursing home care. The second directive came from her early on in her stay in the nursing home. Recognizing that she’d likely never leave, she expressed to me her fear that she’d run out of money if she stayed after her Medicare ran out. So, to keep her there, to keep her safe and to keep her from using up her savings, I contacted a company that manages getting the aging on Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid) to ensure long-term care. There were three of us “watching over” my friend, but none of us could take on the 24-hour-a-day attention we knew she’d require. I took care of protecting her assets. Another one of us saw to selling her mobile home and its contents because all of her income would become “share of cost” with nothing left for the rent on her space or any other expenses. I will always owe this woman a debt that cannot be repaid.

For several months, March through July, I wondered why we even kept her in the nursing home. I mean, I knew I couldn’t have her stay with me; my anxiety disorder wouldn’t let me sleep if she were there. She understood that. But still, she was stuck in a place where most everyone is suffering from some form of dementia, and she wasn’t. There was always someone yelling all night long, and that made it hard for her to sleep. I should have just bit the bullet and brought her home with me, but as it was, I was getting sick (fever, chills, lack of appetite, sleeping all the time) about once a month for 5 or 6 days. I couldn’t take care of her with that going on. (Whether these bouts with illness were merely a product of stress or related to an actual physical cause will soon be determined as I go through testing and referral to a specialist.)

She died on a Monday afternoon late in September of this year (this awful year of 2016) around 4 p.m. It was peaceful and quiet, and I felt privileged to be present. And then came the business matters. She’d organized everything well, so it was fairly simple to close out various accounts and disappear her from the system. The year is nearly done, and all that’s left are her taxes, which can’t be done until next year anyway.

Oh, and my cat died two weeks ago. 2016 sucked.

The Build–Writing a Worthy Ending

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I am not a Led Zeppelin fan. In the 70s and 80s, whenever a radio station would present the top 300 or 500 of the entire history of rock-and-roll on Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend, I’d cringe as they approached #1. It was always, inexorably, inexplicably, inevitably “Stairway to Heaven.” I hate “Stairway to Heaven.” I do, however, have a Led Zeppelin guilty pleasure. “Kashmir.” I crank it up on my car radio when it comes on. I’ve even downloaded it from iTunes and am listening to it right now as loud as my Walkman will allow me.

What, you may ask, intrigues me about this song? The build. The slow build of drums  and bass into brass and other orchestral wonders. And that relentless beat. My body moves with no conscious participation on my part.  And then the lyrical pauses with the taste of Eastern  delights.

As writers, we can learn from “Kashmir.” At the moment, I am in the middle of what could be a powerful ending to my latest novel, but that power, I realized last night, lies in the build. Don’t go too fast. I’m tempted to just rush in and then leave myself with nowhere to go because I’ve already crescendoed to the peak. I know where we’re going, and I want so badly to get there because it’s going to blow the reader’s mind. But I must slow down, allow fate to tickle at the reader’s heart but leave as little trace as possible until the fullness is revealed. This is a delicate balance which must be respected. Nuance is everything. I’ll let you know how it turns out.