Hello reader friends,

It’s been a minute, but I’m not going to promise any regular pattern from here. Life is messy and the world is in chaos in so many heavy ways. And despite—or maybe because of my absence from big social media—I still exist and am trying to create in this swirl of madness. (I do lurk on BlueSky and post regularly on Mastodon if you find yourself in either of those places @vvitchtoria at both.)

Previously

In May, I finished A Witch’s Book of Days and sent that off to my new publisher, Crossed Crow Books. It is part commonplace book, part perpetual calendar, and part ritual companion for the year. Pre-ordering is available now through the publisher and hopefully soon through all other retail channels. If you think you’d like a copy of your own, please consider pre-ordering as those purchases help the publisher gage interest in the book.

I took a bit of a hiatus from writing and the U.S. and spent a month in England first walking the Winchester to Canterbury pilgrimage with my sister and a friend and then on an extended road trip through southern England and into Wales with my partner. Highlights included spending a rainy day in Chawton and visiting Jane Austen’s house there, finding blue plaques and church pews and statues dedicated to writers sprinkled everywhere we walked or stopped, seeing narrow boats on the canals, art installations in unexpected places, gardens in late summer bloom, and what I have only half jokingly referred to as the scones and sticky toffee pudding tour. People say the food in UK is bad, but clearly you can find bad food anywhere. You can of course follow Mark Twain’s advice on eating breakfast at every meal, or hit up a tea room for scones and savory pies, or find the local Indian or Turkish takeaway. Fish and chips is also tied with chicken tikka as the national dish for a reason.

Onward

Back from what is probably the last “big trip” for a while, I am at my desk again writing, publishing, and podcasting.

1000Volt Press published the follow up to Yvonne Aburrow’s Changing Paths, Pagan Roots. It looks at terms and concepts from pre-Christian religion and how those got ported into Christianity and how and why a modern pagan can reclaim them. In February, we are releasing Cathy Lynn’s debut novella The Keeper & the Mermaid, a contemporary fantasy set in the Florida Keys. It will be ebook only and is the first of a trilogy of novellas. A collected print edition will be available later this year. As keifel and I have both been swamped, these will be the only releases this year from 1000Volt.

The WitchLit podcast continues in an altered format and cadence. We’ve moved to a monthly release and rather than just talking writing and their latest book with my guest, they choose a classic “witch lit” book by a dead author for us to read and discuss. Recent guests include Cassandra Snow (Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom), Judika Illes (The Master and Margarita), folklorist Mark Norman (The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor), and Thumper Forge (Raymond Buckland’s Cardinal’s Sin). In February, steampunk fantasy author Anne Renwick is joining me to discuss Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. You can subscribe to the podcast at all fine podcatchers or listen on our website.

I am slowly typing away on a book for Llewellyn Worldwide that I probably won’t have information on until next year. I have a chapter in an anthology currently under review that deals with the folk practices and magic to be found in antiquarian household management books. I’ll share more on the status of that when I know it. The follow up to Verona Green, Mummy Brown, is slated for next year, as soon as I get the current manuscript off to my editor. I had to put it on the back burner when I sold A Witch’s Book of Days and the current Llewellyn project but I am itching to get back to Verity and her plants and paints.

Out and about, what I’m reading

If you are the pagan/witchcraft/occult conference going sort, I’ll be attending Between the Worlds/Sacred Space in Baltimore in February. I’m on a panel at Paganicon in Minneapolis in March, and I hope to be at the Salem Witchcraft and Folklore Festival in August. I am also looking at a few local writing or witchy events in the Bay Area but I don’t have solid dates on those yet. There will also be some book launch events in September when A Witch’s Book of Days is released but, again, no details yet.

And lastly, I am currently rereading the aforementioned Hound of the Baskervilles, catching up on Anne Renwick’s latest, just finished listening to Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. All of which I can recommend, the Kim Stanley Robinson especially if you need a dense book that offers a not-bleak peek into the future.

Remember there are more of us than them. Take care of yourselves and each other and thank you as always for joining me on this journey.

<3 V