🎉Launch Day🎉 Night of the Witch is out in the world!

Join me on my book birthday and real life birthday!

Make sure you stick around all the way to the bottom of this email to see some cool travel pictures!

Have you seen the gorgeous trailer for Night of the Witch yet? Let me just let these stunning graphics do the work…and stay to the end for the coolest transformation of the title that I’ve ever seen…

It’s officially October 3, which means that (a) it’s my birthday! and (b) it’s Night of the Witch’s birthday, too! The book coming out on my literal birthday was not something I arranged, but I’ve gleefully glommed onto the coincidence. Because writing as a career is hard, and honestly? Having a book come out is my forever birthday wish, and so the timing right now it even more epic, as the wish is already true even before any birthday candles are blown.

It’s also not too late to get some extra pre-order goodies! You have until October 17 to submit your receipt to Sourcebooks and get this beautiful art print from NipuniDraws:

Submit your receipt here to get a copy! And remember that you can also get a gold-foiled quote card by ordering from local indies (see my instagram for a list of where they are available), and you can also get additional quote cards, stickers, and bookmarks from me here, no purchase required!

If you’re interested in grabbing Night of the Witch, I highly recommend you order from one of the bookstores Sara and I will be visiting on our book tour. You’ll get our signatures, swag, and you’ll be supporting local independent businesses that do amazing things in the community.

Of course, not every birthday can be perfect… unfortunately, I picked up Covid along with some souvineers on my recent travels, and that’s impacting the book tour. The tour stop in Asheville will now be virtual, and the tour stop in Decatur will only feature Sara. On doctor’s advice, I will be picking up the tour at Pikesville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, and then returning to Asheville to sign all preorders. (Which means, if you order from Malaprops, you’ll still get all signatures, swag, etc.—it will just ship a little bit later, after I’m no longer carrying the plague.)

Preorder signed copies of Night of the Witch from tour stops:

• Malaprops, Asheville

• Little Shop of Stories, Decatur (Sara only)

• Barnes & Noble, Pikesville

• Novel Neighbor, St Louis

• Joseph-Beth Cincinnati, with bonus guests

If you’d like to get your copy from one of the big box retailers, too! In fact, both Amazon and Rakuten/Kobo have selected Night of the Witch as a Best Book of the Month! (And WalMart people…maybe go check it out in the aisles of your local WalMart and see how it looks there… ;)

You can find links to all the major retailers here. Plus, Amazon is currently running a sale on the hardcover—only $11, cheaper than most paperbacks!—and our rank has shot up to the #14 spot of all YA fantasy!

In all seriousness, this book is a special one to me. I know I sound like a broken record, because all my books are special to me—I wouldn’t invest so much of my time and life in my art if I didn’t care about it. But this book?

It links me to my past. Researching this book led me to discover an ancestor who had been in Trier (a few centuries after the witch trials), and to help my mom locate the exact village where our ancestors lived centuries before the witch trials. Because of the research I was doing, I embarked on not one but two travel research trips with my mother, and we walked in the footsteps of both my ancestors and my characters.

Here I am in front of the Spitzhaus, the oldest house in Germany, and a building that my ancestors absolutely could have seen. Additionally, a building Fritzi and Otto saw as they trekked through Germany in the book.

Having only written science fiction and fantasy before, I’d never had the experience of writing about a place I could actually visit before Night of the Witch. So, after spending months researching the exact layout of Trier, once I was finally in Trier? It was amazing to see how much of the city map that existed in past was still present today.

This is Lion Apothecary, the oldest apothecary in Germany, and a place Fritzi visits to get some potion ingredients.

This brick wall is a part of the Aula Palantina, the old palace of Constantine of the Roman Empire, and those bricked in archways were the a part of the original hypocaust, a built-in method of heating with pipes and water under the floor. Which also became a huge part of the heist Otto plans to free the witches.

The Aula Palantina from a different angle. This building has been a palace, a seat of government, and a church; Sara and I envisioned it as a prison for those accused of witchcraft.

Another fun building that’s existed from the book times to now—the House of the Magi! This is a “house fort,” and in the Middle Ages (before Coffee Fellows bought the building), there was NO DOOR on the ground floor. The arched red door to the left was the ONLY door into the building…and it started on the second floor. To enter, someone inside had to lower down a ladder. This lack of entry on the ground floor meant that during raids, this house was safer than most. You only had to pull up the ladder and it would be extremely difficult to get inside. A few house forts, including this one, still survive today, although most of them now have accessible doors added on.

The Porta Nigra was also a major influence on both Trier and Night of the Witch—although during the Middle Ages, it was actually built over and looked nothing like it does now, recreated to match the Roman era building.

One thing I didn’t know if I could do or not is go inside. I had limited time in Trier, but the ability to step inside the stone building, climb up the ancient steps, and walk in the place where saints walked was breathtaking.

The interior of the Porta Nigra is actually where I had the hardest time researching. There are very few records of what the building was like in the Middle Ages, when it was used as a church. There are even fewer records of what the interior was like. Sara and I had to get a little inventive with descriptions, but there was one that always bothered me.

In the scene, Dieter, the bad guy, is in his office, and he uses a stone closet to lock a prisoner up. It wasn’t too much of a jump to say that one of the rooms in the building could be both his office and have a stone closet—the building was made of stone, after all, and small closets weren’t that rare. Still, we had to invent that bit of description wholesale, because there simply were no records we could find of the interior layout.

But then, when I was climbing the steps of the Porta Nigra, I turned the corner, to the spot where we’d placed Dieter’s office, and discovered…this.

A stone door leading to what could only be a stone closet. It was there. As if to prove that our story could have happened.

This is me, in the Black Forest, with snow gently floating down, only a few weeks after Night of the Witch sold. This was a book that I didn’t know would exist. That I couldn’t tell whether it had a chance or not. And I took a lot of gambles with it. I booked my first trip to Germany without knowing whether it would sell or not (I used my dishwasher money…and still don’t have a dishwasher in the house). This was the book that I wrote without knowing how it would end, without knowing if it would end. This was a book that I took a chance on, and I’m so grateful that Sara took a chance on it with me, and that our agents also did, and that Sourcebooks did.

I hope you take a chance with it, too.

Thank you, always, for enabling me to live my dreams, and for sharing your dreams with the characters I make.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You are my magic.