Ava Morgyn is the USA Today bestselling author of The Bane Witch and The Witches of Bone Hill. She grew up falling in love with all the wrong characters in all the wrong stories, then studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University. She is a lover of witchcraft, tarot, and powerful women with bad reputations, and she currently resides in Houston surrounded by antiques and dog hair. When not at her laptop spinning darkly hypnotic tales, she writes for her blog on child loss (forloveofevelyn.com), hunts for vintage treasures, and reads the darkest books she can find.
She is the author of YA novels Resurrection Girls and The Salt in Our Blood.
When we talk about, write about, dance or paint or sing about witches, what we’re really expressing is the intersection of two very primal elements—the feminine psyche and empowerment. All witches, whether new or old, good or evil, stereotypical or novel, are the embodiment of these two rudimentary components. Layered on top of that are the judgments, culture, historical context, and fantasies we carry about this incredibly powerful and dynamic convergence. But make no mistake, boiled down to her most basic essence, a witch is and always will be a commentary on women and power. In her seminal work, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, “…the ogress, the witch, the wild nature, and whatever other criaturas and integral aspects the culture finds awful in the psyches of women are the very blessed things which women often need most to retrieve and bring to the surface.”
Because the archetype of the witch can be broken down into such simple constructs, the character of the witch remains relevant in literature. Any character arc at its foundation is a transformation, a journey from zero to hero, from fool to sage, from victim to victor, and so on. The story of the witch fits neatly into the packaging of plot. A woman uncovering her secrets, discovering her power, recovering herself. Set her in a fantastical cottage, an ancient castle, a historical event, or a modern office—she will thrive. She will win characters’ confidence and readers’ hearts. For her driving force is to understand and wield her magic. Her eternal quest to reunite with her innate gifts and make herself whole. Her essential pattern to shift from misunderstood, vulnerable, and outcast to powerful, independent, and complete. In the context of story, that’s consistently successful. Adapt that core premise in whatever way you desire. Trap her in a horrible relationship or make her the lonely reject at the edge of town. Give her a countenance men desire or a face they abhor. Write her into vortices of wit, gore, passion, or charm. And watch her magically maneuver to the resolution of your three-act structure again and again.
The witch is no longer bound by green skin and warts or the circling noose or flames of an execution. She is not trapped in the past or limited by her previous manifestations. So don’t expect to find your witches only in the fantasy aisle, or the historical romance genre, or cozied up in a fictional cottage. Expect them to leap from the pages into your local coffee shop or high rise, to crawl from beneath the cover into the civilizations of tomorrow, to cry out from the recessed corners of cultures across the world. Because the witch is every woman. She is not only the virginal maid or the capacity of the mother or the crone in menopause. She is all of them. And women can, will, and do survive and thrive in a myriad of periods, settings, and circumstances.
Likewise, she is a pattern most women readily recognize, relate to, and receive because she closely mirrors their own. Anyone, in fact, of any age or gender who has experienced feeling vulnerable, victimized, oppressed, or ostracized will see in the character of the witch something of themselves and their own journey of becoming. In her emerging magic and innate medicine, they will recognize their own unique traits and talents, the explicit features of who they are that set them apart from everyone else, rendering them both ecstatically diverse and radically exposed, open to worship and witch hunt alike.
In the modern world, the witch has evolved. She texts and uses social media, she has dating profiles online and works remotely. But the underlying assertion is the same. She is the feminine psyche wandering the same landscape populated by new monsters. The illusions have changed, but the danger has not. And she will need all her wiles to survive—instinct, intuition, creativity, connection, emotional awareness and expression, the work and wisdom of the women who have gone before her. To write a witch of today, you have to consider how her unique assortment of fictional powers will manifest in a world facing environmental crisis, the unrelenting progress of the tech industry, and the psychological nuance of recent generations. In some cases, this will make your job as the author easier. In others, it will make it much more challenging. At the same time, it is good to respect the ancient and archival weight she carries with her into a contemporary story. She harkens to something older and deeper than the laptops and lattes she is surrounded by. Use that to your advantage, both as a way to give her lyrical dimension within your narrative and to capture the imaginations of your readers.
The witch isn’t going anywhere. Because women and the challenges women face aren’t evolving fast enough to render her obsolete. Even in a utopian future, the history of oppression and accusation women have faced will remain, in blood memory at least if not within the historical records. Witches are archetypally as relevant today as they were hundreds of years ago, even more in this era of reclaiming and the feminist movement. As our judgments about women and power shift, so to do the trappings of the witch’s story, but her presence is constant. And it will remain. The witches of tomorrow may see the toppling of patriarchal values, the dying breath of oppressive politics. Or they may watch the world drag itself backward into the mire before surging forth again, desperate and grasping at progress. They may continue to roll with wave after wave of demonization and idealization as humanity wrestles with itself. But they will stand through it all because they hold space for the power women have to create change, hold influence, and transform themselves and the world around them through destiny and will.
The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn
Piers Corbin has a strange affinity for poison in all forms, especially in the form of men. After faking her own death to escape her turbulent marriage and fleeing to her estranged aunt’s home, Piers discovers that she is part of a long line of Bane Witches, women who ingest poisonous plants to get rid of evil men. Piers begins her deadly work while dodging the local authorities until she catches the attention of a serial killer—her biggest target yet.
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