A Paranormal Series

The Cré-Witch Chronicles 

And my first foray into the urban fantasy/paranormal realm. These are Witches of Eastwick meets Harry Potter (for grown ups) with a swing past Terry Pratchett (RIP to a great writer), and span an endangered coven’s race to save magic from an evil witch determined to ascend to Goddess. There’s lots of humor, plenty of magic, and a good helping of romance.

Druidry: The mythology behind the Cré-Witches

Thanks to a good friend and wonderful human being, Cynthia St Aubin, I fell in love with druidry and that provided the inspiration for this series.

I loved the idea of our interconnectedness and also that we are part of the world around us and not the masters of all we survey. I loved the power of a female deity and the worship of nature. This all got my imagination goin.

Also at the time I started conceptualizing the series, there was a lot going on that challenged my belief system and made me feel out of control and hopeless. Ironically, things seem to have gone from bad to worse since then.

There is much in the world that seems unbalanced—political upheaval, bigotry, cruelty to each other, willful stupidity and ignorance, intolerance, we even have a plague going on. Maybe it’s always been that way, but I had the naive belief that we were really doing better as a species. I wanted to believe we were growing past persecuting people based on skin color, sexual orientation, gender, religious belief, or any of those other meaningless labels we slap on each other.

I created a series around the idea that what we see going on about us had mystical roots. That the all powerful, earth goddess, was absent from the world, and in her absence things had gone insane.

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The Prequel: Cast In Stone

The first question I had to answer was how this omnipotent, omniscient essence of life deity had become so absent from the world that we’d gotten ourselves into this mess. I took the story on a time jump to the British witch-hunts of the 1600s. Although not as violent or comprehensive as the US Salem witch trials or the those which swept Europe, Britain certainly had its fair share of certifiable witch killers. I’ve blended a bit of historical fact into my account of how the witches of Baile castle all but disappeared.

Baile means home, and is the sentient headquarters of my witches.

I also needed to make sure all that knowledge and magic lore that had been lost in the intervening centuries had a way of being brought back. Although you don’t need to read the prequel to understand the series, it will give you a little extra information and a much deeper grasp on who’s who in the series. As well as introduce you to the first couple in the series.

I do need to warn you though, this one ends on a helluva cliffhanger.

Vol 1: Born In Water

The first official book in the series takes place in the modern day. The cré-witches are near enough extinct. There are only five of them still living in Baile Castle, and they’ve no idea what they are capable of or who the really are.

A fifth witch arrives from America with a burning need to trace her roots. And I can’t tell you too much more without ruining the story entirely. I can tell you about the magic and how it works.

The Magic of the Cré-Witches

Every fantasy series with witches has to have a way that magic works. It’s one of the first things I had to create.

Each witch draws her magical power from one of the four elements: air, water, earth, fire. This is really the engine that runs her gift. Each witch also has a unique gift and that’s both her power and her purpose. My witches don’t cast spells, so much as they work with the magic inherent in the earth. The name Cré-Witch means earth witch.

When Goddess first created the cré-witches, she called one witch for each element and gave each witch one of four main gifts or blessings.

Guardian: Is in charge of animals and all sentient beings

Warder: Manages and nurtures the earth itself, and all the things that grow from it and within it

Healer: Pretty self explanatory, she has the power to take disease and injury from the body and transmute it back into the earth.

Seer: She can see all of time, past, present and future. The seer gets visions of the future and is also able to scry other beings.

Then there is a fifth gift that I developed and that’s the spirit walker.

The Sacred Caverns of Baile

I used the Margate Caves as my inspiration for the caverns beneath Baile Castle. This fascinating and ancient site really got my imagination going.

The patterns on the walls, in my series, are the stories of the witches who have passed on. They are sigils made up of shells, crystals and fossils, and through them the spirit walker can walk amongst the dead witches and access their wisdom and their magic. The spirit walker witch is also charged with placing the story of a witch’s life on the walls of the caverns when she passes from this realm.

There can only be one spirit walker in any given time, and you first meet Maeve in Cast in Stone.