At long last, and worth the wait—book 5 of Tales of the End Times, The Plague God, is ready for preorder as an ebook! Link below!
I’ll post again when the print and ebook final is out—for Samhain (Halloween), the Witches’ New Year!
(Image is The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, by Maurice Greiffenhagen—final cover to come.)
It’s out today, my lovely book, the third of the Tales of the End Times series: The Way to Witch Farm.
To order it, you can go to Amazon here (and you can get it free with Kindle Unlimited): https://amzn.to/3mIDBWT
To get the series, you can go here: https://amzn.to/3jL2gIm
Today is Samhain, the Witches New Year, and a full moon besides that. My coven and I will scry tonight, looking forward to a future that may yet be bright. In honor of the holiday, here’s a Samhain excerpt from the book.
“Now we will make offerings to Hekate, Dea, and the ancestors, asking for their help.”
The line started forward. Along the altar, the attendees moved from one incense burner to the next. Hekate received a blend containing mint and aconite, Dea patchouli with rose, the spirits mugwort and sandalwood.
It’s a blustery first of November. All morning, the cats have watched out the window as leaves fly by, wondering if the leaves are birds.
Hekate has been calling me back for reconnection. The mother of witches, she’s been with me since I was a young teen.
I didn’t know it then. I drew and painted then as often as I wrote, and one of my first big projects for my seventh-grade art class was a woodblock print. I made a traditional witch’s workroom—skulls, books, candles, cauldron. Out the window was a waning moon. In those days, any time I drew a moon freehand without thinking, it was waning.
Today is Samhain, the witches’ new year. Like any new year, it’s a time to notice change, and a time perhaps for resolutions.
My parents are dead. They were pretty fucked-up people, a drunk and a codependent. My dad wasn’t a high-functioning drunk, either—he never conquered alcoholism.
This is Potato, my witch-cat. She’s not a familiar, not the receptacle for a helper spirit. She is a fully participating member of our coven, though she hasn’t taken the coven class yet.
Potato came to Samhain. She noshed with us beforehand as we noshed. She sat by the scrying mirrors as we scried. She took part in the divination.
This Samhain, we had a visitor who brought with her a pendulum and divination cloth that said, yes, no, maybe, and don’t want to answer.
Last night, we had our coven Samhain ritual. One of our members led; she made tea from hawthorn berries. Hawthorn is associated with both the big spirit-gates of the year, Samhain and Beltaine.
Another coven member made a couple of black mirrors for scrying. She got picture frames from Goodwill, cleaned the glass well, painted it on one side with black high-gloss paint, then put the frames back together. Voila!
It’s a windy morning, Halloween weather, mixed overcast and rain, gusts pushing the clouds around. I love windy Octobers, especially nights, clouds blowing across the moon, the feeling that anything is possible, anything can step out of the shadows.