I’ll be ushering in autumn this year by attending Hal-Con…as an author! In years past, I’ve gone to “the biggest, geekiest sci-fi convention in Atlantic Canada” with my family and had a total blast, so I’m SUPER excited to be one of this year’s featured authors. Of course I also have a ton of burning questions…Which Kiki’s Delivery Service t-shirt do I wear? How do I keep my cool while fan-girling over Tamora Pierce? What’s my limit when it comes to buying new D&D dice? Hopefully I’ll get that all figured out before I go. If you’re headed to Hal-Con, …
Tag: The Witches of New York
While working on a project, (whether a novel, play, or piece of non-fiction,) I surround myself with images that relate to the writing. This part of my process becomes especially important with historical fiction, since I’m striving to create a world that I hope readers will “experience” as they read the book. With The Witches of New York, I wound up with loads of period photographs and illustrations that I pinned to the walls of my writing studio or kept on my laptop for inspiration. A few of the images even found their way onto a thumb drive that I carried with …
Welcome to Witchy Wednesday! This is the first in a series of posts I’ll be devoting to the topic of witches and witchcraft. I’ve long been a fan of all things “witchy”-crystal balls, incantations, black cats, etc., and as a child, my favourite Halloween costume was “the classic witch.” So, it seems only natural that I’d eventually choose to write a novel inhabited by witches of my own making in all their strange, enchanting glory. While writing The Witches of New York, I gathered heaps of historical accounts and odd tales alongside bits and bobs of practical magic. Not all …
Last week I painted my nails black, cast a few spells, spent two days whispering a 400+ page manuscript to myself, and then, on the evening of what would’ve been my mother’s eighty-first birthday, I sent a book-shaped thing called The Witches of New York to my keen-eyed literary agent, Helen Heller. You’d think by now I wouldn’t get jittery during this part of the writing process, but I do. I do! (Just ask my dear family.) It’s to be expected, I guess, because by the time I reach this point, I’ve become quite attached to the story and its …