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Happy Holidays, Magickal Friends!!!
I hope that those of you who celebrated the first day of Yule, like me, had a great one this year. I spent mine doing a manifesting spell, which reminds me that I need to do the second part of it. It's kind of a combination of a few spells that I mish-mashed together. Some witches think that's OK as long as the spells are seeking the same result and cast with the same intention. But those witches are in the minority, I suspect. That said, I'm already in a minority of witches, being that I'm what's called a Christian Witch. There are many of us, and I highly recommend The Christian Witch's Handbook if you're Christian but drawn to witchcraft. Or if you're a witch who left the Christian thing behind but still believe in Jesus.
If you are a Christian Witch like me then you have lots of things to celebrate this time of year! And I'll take all the holidays I can get!
As for what I hope to manifest with the spell, well, it's mostly career goals. Some of it sounds pretty far-fetched, but people who read The Secret or follow the seminars of Tony Robbins know that a lot of people believe they can manifest things by believing that they will successfully draw things to them. That believing it will happen will make it happen. You still have to do the work, but you can supposedly achieve the results you want much faster. So, I'm doing one better. Instead of just believing that my goals for next year will be achieved, I'm doing my manifesting in the form of a spell so I'll have magick and the Lord and Lady on my side. To that end, when these people manifest things and they happen, I have to wonder if magick wasn't involved somehow. If the whole process of creating their goals and writing them down and everything isn't casting some sort of spell and they just don't realize that's what they're doing. Who knows. But these are the type of thoughts that race through my bipolar mind when I'm trying to fall asleep at night. When I'm not thinking about any of my books, that is!
On another note, Becoming Madonna is ready for proofreaders! A couple of you have already expressed interest and I will be getting the pdf to you soon, but I usually have around 5 or 6 people give my books a read because different people will spot different types of errors. Someone might be a grammar nerd. Someone else might be especially good at spelling. Someone else might be an expert at finding plot holes. You get the idea. I can't afford an editor, so I have a bunch of you terrific people read the books and hopefully by the time I'm done making all of your corrections and such the books are ready for the market.
Becoming Madonna is a quick read at 71,000 words. As I said in my previous newsletter, the book was written in 1998, which is the year it remains set in, and I was heavily influenced by Bret Easton Ellis when I first wrote it. The protagonist has a lot of sociopathic traits, and thus has a lot of character flaws, and does start off saying racist and homophobic things. But all that amounts to is her calling the Hispanic actor on the soap she stars on Latin Lover, which started because that's what was stated in lieu of a character name in the first draft of the script because they wanted to wait until they'd cast their Hispanic heartthrob before naming the character so the name would fit well. So, they deliberately cast a "Latin Lover" and my character just continues to call him that.
The other thing is that she has an irrational fear of butch lesbians and makes fun of them as a coping mechanism. Not to their faces, just in the exposition; the book is in first person from her point of view. It stems from something that happened to her when she was a kid, which is eventually explained. And I should point out that people call her out on her shit and she wises up by the end of the book and no longer has these issues. But if these things would bother you tremendously, then obviously you should do us both a favor and not read it. If those things wouldn't be a big deal for you, then I'd love to have you proofread it if you could. If you're interested, just reply to this e-mail and let me know
And I'm sorry that the above contains mild spoilers, but I wanted people to know about these things before they commit to reading it, lest they hate it.
You might start off hating the protagonist, Laurie Saint-Germain, but chances are you'll really like her by the end.
Before I go, I have to tell you that my friend April Wood's new book, Amid Summer's Nightmare, is out now. I'm currently reading it and I love, love, love immersing myself in April's wonderful world of witches. Her characters are always memorable and sometimes her heroines remind me of the girls from Book of Shadows. (Except that hers don't swear their heads off.) This is the third book in her Season of the Witch series and I recommend you start at the beginning with Winter's Curse and read the books in the order they were released and happen in.
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