2015 Witches and Witchcraft Reading Challenge!

 

In December I graduated with an MA in Creative Writing after spending a year working on a historical fiction/magical realism novel exploring witchcraft in Tudor England, so naturally I just had to sign up for this reading challenge when I came across it!

Much like the 2015 Fairytale Challenge, this challenge runs all year from January 1st to December 31st 2015, and the goal is simply to read books that feature witches and witchcraft! You can sign up all the way up until December 15th 2015, so if you're in the mood to read some witchy books then sign up - just click the image above to go to the sign up page!

The Levels!

Initiate: 1-5 Books

Maiden: 6-10 Books

Mother: 11-15 Books

Crone: 16-20 Books

My Tentative 2015 Witchy TBR!

The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston

The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston

Witchstruck by Victoria Lamb

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Half Bad by Sally Green

Half Wild by Sally Green

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford

Witches: A Tale of Scandal, Sorcery and Seduction by Tracy Borman

The Witch Hunter by Virginia Boecker

Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper

Burn Mark by Laura Powell

The Thickety: A Path Begins by J. A. White

My Witchy Recommendations!

Witch Child by Celia Rees

Sorceress by Celia Rees

Corrag by Susan Fletcher

Malkin Child by Livi Michael

Witch Hill by Marcus Sedgwick

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Witch by Damian Walford Davies

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Happy reading, and good luck!

What's Up Wednesday! | 19/03/13

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

What I'm Reading

On Monday I finished Jane Nickerson's Strands of Bronze and Gold, which is a retelling of the Bluebeard myth set in 19th century Mississippi. I enjoyed it, but I found quite a few flaws in it. I'm planning on writing up a review of it soon, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested in hearing my thoughts on it!

Right now I'm making my way through Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England and I'm liking it so far - it's very conversational, which is always a plus when it comes to non-fiction! I'm also making my way through Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches, the first book in the All Souls trilogy, and Susan Ee's World After, the second book in the Penryn and the End of Days series. I'm not quite sure how I feel about them yet, but they're definitely both series with a lot of potential.

What I'm Writing

I'm still working away on my WIP, and I have to submit an extract on Friday for my first seminar with one of our new tutors next week. I'm working on a pretty important scene that a lot of my seminar group have been waiting to see for a while, so I just hope I can do it justice! That being said we usually submit pretty rough drafts to our workshops, so I'm not letting myself stress out over it too much. 

I've recently started planning a novella I'd like to write for Camp NaNoWriMo in April, too, and by recently I mean really recently. It's going okay so far - I'm waiting until I finish the scene for Friday before I start planning it in more detail.

Outside of story writing I've been writing a bunch of reviews for throughout April (I'll be talking about this in more detail at the end of next week!) and the other day I finished writing a post about why we still read and write about witches, which I suppose is kind of a companion post to my post from last week about Historical Fiction. 

I mentioned last week that I had to do a presentation. I had to talk about my current WIP and how it relates to the wider world, so I ended up doing a lot of thinking about why people write Historical Fiction and why witches still fascinate us. It seemed a shame to let that research go to waste!

What Inspires Me Right Now

March is Women's History Month in the UK, US and Australia, so this month I've been learning about some pretty amazing women that I'd never heard about before.

One woman I had heard about before is Ching Shih, the Cantonese pirate who terrorised the China sea in the early 19th century. I haven't delved into poetry in a while, but I'd love to try and write a sea shanty about her!

What Else I've Been Up To

Somehow last week I completely forgot to mention that I'm a Book Depository Affiliate! There's now a snazzy little link on the right that you can click if you want to buy yourself a book from The Book Depository, and I'll get a small commission. I'm still a student, so every little helps!

I've been a little unwell the past few days so I haven't been up to that much outside of reading and writing, but this weekend I'm off to my friend's birthday party. She's having a 1920's themed cocktail party so I get to dress up as a flapper - needless to say, I'm excited!

What's new with you?