Welcome to the Witching Season!

Every year, on October first, I write a post called Welcome to the Witching Season. And this year is no exception. But this year is a special year, so I want to write a special post.

Twenty years ago come Tuesday, I had a new book come out. It was the first in a series and I was terrified. Instead of a 10,000 copy print run like they did for my mysteries, Berkeley was printing 70,000 copies of this new book. I was terrified that it wouldn’t sell, because one bad book can be your last book with a traditional publisher — and by bad, I mean a book that doesn’t sell. Not one that’s written poorly.

So October 6 came around, and Witchling hit the shelves, and the rest is history. The print run sold out quickly. More print runs were ordered. The week after it first came out, I hit my first bestseller list — the USA Today bestseller list. And it kept on selling. And books two — Changeling, and three — Darkling, sold like crazy. I began to make the big lists: the New York Times, the USA Today, the Publisher’s Weekly. And Otherworld exploded in popularity. With my seventeenth published book, I was suddenly a best-selling author, thrust into a space I had so very much wanted, for so very long.

Sometimes, an idea strikes out of the blue, and I call it a lightning-bolt idea.

Otherworld began one night when I was sitting on the floor watching TV. This was back when we lived in a rental house over in Bellevue. The house had extremely high ceilings, and there were two very long windows that began at 7.5 feet off the floor. I happened to be looking up at those windows during a commercial when three women jumped through them to land in front of me. I didn’t see them physically, but I saw them in my mind, and they were so very real at that moment.

The first had long raven-black hair. She was a very busty, curvy woman, dressed in a corset and a black taffeta skirt and witchy boots, and she wore makeup like I wore makeup—vibrant and gothic. The second was six-feet tall, wearing jeans and a tank top, and she had blonde hair down to her mid-back. She was athletic and looked a little skittish. And the third was petite—barely five feet tall and lean, and her copper hair was tightly bound in dozens of braids down to her back, with ivory beads in them. She had pale eyes, and when she smiled she had fangs. She was wearing skintight jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and a pair of high-heeled stiletto boots.

I looked at them, and they looked back at me.

The black-haired woman said, “I’m Camille D’Artigo, and these are my sisters. This is Delilah, and she’s a werecat; she turns into a golden tabby. And this is my sister, Menolly. She’s a vampire. As for me? I’m a wicked-good witch, but my magic goes haywire. We are half-human and half Fae.” And then she said something that set everything in motion. She said, “And you need to write our stories.” And then the three women disappeared.

When something like that happens, you don’t ignore it. I went into my office and I wrote down everything that she had told me. And then I went back to watching my TV show.

A couple of days later, the incident was still at the front of my thoughts. So I sat down and I wrote about two paragraphs of what I thought I knew about the sisters. And then I approached my agent, who told me to write up a synopsis and a sample chapter and send them to my editor. So I did.

I didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks, until my editor wrote back telling me, “I showed this to eight different editors. None of us knows quite what it is, but we all like it. We’re going to give you three-book contract, and once you write the first book, we’ll decide how to market it.”

When I turned in Witchling, my editor’s only revision notes were, “It’s great. Now take it over the top.” I wasn’t sure what she meant but I revised it, adding a few things in, and she loved it.

I didn’t get a big advance—they actually gave me a very small advance for the first three books, but I was writing something I loved. At the time I wasn’t making anything near what you could call a living from my work. But the publisher decided to market it “big” which—in trad publishing means they were going to throw some money at it, meaning there would be promotion and they’d print a big print run.

And that’s how the series began. And then years later, when the industry was in upheaval, they decided to stop the series 3 books before the end. So I wrote the last three books in indie. And that’s how Moon Shimmers, Harvest Song, and Blood Bonds came to be.

Most of you know the trouble I had getting my books back over the past 10 years, so I’m not going to bore you with that whole mess again. But this year, I got the entire series back, and now it’s out in e-format for you to read again. Some of the books are in print, and the rest will be over the next six months.

And on October 6, on the anniversary of Witchling’s debut, I’m releasing the first book in the sequel series—Queens Will Play. On the 20th anniversary of the book that started so much for me. Camille is back, and a new era begins with Otherworld Unleashed.

So yes, this Witching Season is very important to me. I love autumn, and this autumn I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. I’m writing what I love: urban fantasy. I’m writing series that I love—Otherworld Unleashed, a Wild Hunt sequel—the Crystal Fae series, and I’m continuing the Shadow Blade series.

As the mists rise, and pumpkins dapple the landscape, and shadows grow long and dark, and ghosts come out to say hello, and all those wonderful movies start playing filled with chills and thrills, it feels like I’m back where I belong. I can’t explain it, but I feel at home again. The sisters have been quietly waiting for me to be able to tell their stories again without coping with having to change things for ‘marketing’s sake’ or having to write XX number of sex scenes per book, and now I can write however many books I want.

Autumn this year has a spark of hope for me. And I truly hope that you enjoy the return to Otherworld, and that you come along for the ride.

To those who came in to my work on the Wild Hunt, well, we’re moving ahead with that too. Yes, there’s a new main character, but the rest of the old crew is still there. And to those of you who love Shadow Blade, Kyann is back, and her next book will be out on November 30.

So, welcome to the Witching Season, as the winds gust through the trees, sending their leaves whirling, as ghosts peek out, zombies roam the land, vampires come out of their coffins, and the rains soak the earth, I wish you all the wonderful chills down your spine and spooks and scares that are fun, and the magic that hides in the shadows.