Happy Halloween! These days you’ll mostly find me over on TikTok where I’ve been posting a lot about Witch Test. Though October is a great time of year to read my upper middle grade/lower YA Mean Girls meets The Craft book about overcoming bullying by finding your inner strength (or witch in Liza’s case!), don’t let that stop you from reading it as we move into November.
Giveaway is now open until October 31, 6 pm EST. Winners will be selected October 31 after 6 pm and the winner will be announced on November 1st. Must be 18 years or older to enter. The paperback bundle is available to US only. (Full rules are on the giveaway link.)
If you want all the latest news from me and bonus perks like two free short stories and a 10% discount on signed books through the end of the year, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter! Preview the latest one here.
It feels really good to be releasing a book after what feels like forever since the last one…and to have another coming next month with MOMMY’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
I recently said that writing WITCH TEST was like giving a hug to my 11-year-old self, and I can’t think of a better way to describe how I feel about this book. It’s about finding yourself in the saddest place you’ve ever been in your life and feeling like the only way to get through the day is to put yourself in a bubble of protection. And how do you find your way out of that mindset?
As I mentioned in my post “The Historical and Personal Inspiration Behind WITCH TEST,” it’s also about long grief and about mourning someone you never really knew. Chapter 40, titled “Ritual,” makes me cry every time I read it, and I’m not a crier!
Some of my favorite things about the book are the crows, the Halloween night corn maze, the trio of witches, and tea time at Mother Goose Apothecary.
Anyway, thank you for all the support of this book and my author career in general. If you do end up reading the book (or a young person in your life reads it), please leave a review on Amazon. You don’t have to have bought the book there to leave a review. It helps boost the visibility of the book to help it find more readers.
Liza is sinking in a bubbling cauldron of middle school rumors.
When the entire eighth grade begins studying the Salem witch trials, it seems everyone is on a witch hunt…with Liza as target number one. Worst of all, her ex-best friend is the one who started a rumor that Liza bewitched a boy with a love potion.
As the bullying intensifies, Liza’s loneliness grows. More than ever, she wishes her mother were still alive. A glimmer of hope arrives when Liza finds her mother’s diary…until she actually reads it. Turns out Liza’s family connection to witches goes back for centuries. So much for the witch stuff being rumors!
If Liza can channel her inner witch at the Halloween night corn maze, she might find the strength to stand up for herself. If not, she risks losing a piece of herself to a growing depression and any hope of happiness.
WITCH TEST is an upper middle grade Mean Girls meets The Craft novel for pre-teens and young teens.
Okay, so it’s been a crazy busy fall here. Bookish events abounded; I added over 10,000 words to ELIXIR SAVED in November (so close to finishing this draft finally and really pushing to make my end of year deadline on it); and lots of soccer, school things, and fun stuff with the boys. Now that December is here, the craziness of the holiday season had already started.
So it’s a picture post! (From top to bottom: A book signing event at Barnes & Noble, the boys playing in the driveway, Halloween cookies, Halloween night, writing workshop for kids at the Norwalk Public Library, voting on Election Day, One City One Story event at the Milford Public Library, the two older boys reading PIRATE ISLAND in the green screen pirate ship at the One City One Story event, and a snowy Mark Twain House for the New England SCBWI Day of Craft.) Pop down to the comments and share what you all have been up to.
People wear masks for all types of reasons (and I’m not talking about Halloween masks here). To be deceitful, to protect themselves, to attack others anonymously. There are other more subtle masks that aren’t necessarily about hiding, but are a sort of compartmentalization of our different selves.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw my father in work mode. I was a little kid and for some reason was present when he was talking business. His voice was different and he had a whole new body language I’d never seen before. At the time it was so weird to see him that way, but it gave me another insight into the person he is and the many parts of him. On the eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. my classmates and I got to see a different side of our teachers when they danced along with us at a pizza party. We saw the people behind the teachers.
For me, there’s my author mask that I wear when I’m at an author event and there’s my parenting mask for when I’m at story time or my son’s school. I even use a different name for my writing vs. my family life. These masks are so complete that they border on different personas, though they certainly can intersect at times. Then there are the million other sides of me that aren’t as consuming as the writer or parent me. I have a mask for each one, each mask is as much a part of me as any other, and all together the make the whole of me (which I suppose is the maskless me…or maybe the me of many masks!).
What kind of masks do you wear?
#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (October is all about masks), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs or on your social media page. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.
Tomorrow is Halloween, so happy early Halloween! There will be lots of dressing up and candy eating at my house this weekend. (Okay, there’s already been some candy eating – I’m in the middle of big edit and need my chocolate – and I’m wearing my Gryffindor sweatpants as I type this, so let’s say there will be more than usual candy eating and dressing up this weekend!)
We’ll be heading to my sister’s house for trick-or-treating. She had two adorable kiddos close in age to mine, so that means twice the adorableness. The Boy is being a firefighter this year, and the Prince will be sporting a tiger costume. Leaving you with pics of the boys on their first Halloweens (looking startlingly similar) and asking how you all are celebrating.
