I am not a witch. I don’t know how to prepare potions or cast spells. I have no supernatural powers. I can’t control people or events. I love wearing bright colors and seldom wear black. I have no familiar, by which I mean any small animal or creature given to me by the Devil to serve as my attendant.
I am not like Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Goya tended to paint dark, scary scenes as he grew older, the image above being an example.
Unlike Goya, I don’t believe I have a scary, dark scene in me. Rather, I am like Elizabeth Bennet (she of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice fame), for I dearly love a laugh and am easily amused by many things, especially the antics of cats!
After writing about Regency-era surgery and body-snatchers, why am I blogging about witches? Witches are on my mind because my niece’s husband suggested that I write a horror novel. I remember thinking that I don’t have it in me to write horror. It takes a Stephen King or a Dean Koontz or a Catriona Ward to bring all the scary elements together in the proper mix.
My writing a good horror novel might be akin to Stephen King writing a good Regency Romance novel. I’m not saying he couldn’t do it — he is a highly successful writer, after all — but would his book be as perfect as those Regency romances written by Mary Balogh, Loretta Chase, or Georgette Heyer? Frankly, I’d be surprised if they were.
No matter how it happened, the idea of writing a horror novel intrigued me so much that I began writing a novel about witches set in England’s Regency era. Besides which, the Regency era is a good time for horror, because people truly believed in witches, goblins, and supernatural events, as do some people today.
Even though I am not a witch, I am enjoying reading and writing about them. More about witches to follow …
NOTE: Information about Goya’s painting titled “Witches or Incantation” (painted in 1797 or 1798) can be found here (Wikimedia) or in this article by Anastasia S. Kirpalov published in The Collector.