Crow Moon
by Anna McKerrow
Release Date: March 5th, 2015
Publishers: Quercus
Genre: YA, Paranormal, Romance
Pages: 384
Danny is a fun-loving 16-year-old looking for a father figure and falling in love with a different girl every day. He certainly doesn't want to follow in his mum's witchy footsteps.
Just as his community is being threatened by gangs intent on finding a lucrative power source to sell to the world, Danny discovers he is stunningly powerful. And when he falls for Saba, a gorgeous but capricious girl sorceress, he thinks maybe the witch thing might not be such a bad idea...
But what cost will Danny pay as, with his community on the brink of war, he finds that love and sorcery are more dangerous than he ever imagined?
Wickedness and passion combine in this coming-of-age adventure.
Top 5 (okay 6) favourite fictional witches
By Anna McKerrow
1.
Willow
Rosenberg in Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Willow
is, in my opinion, far and away the best modern depiction of a witch in popular
culture, because she’s a normal girl. Kind of a geeky girl, actually. Oh - and
she’s gay.
Admittedly,
things go a bit fantasy here and there, especially later in the series when she
becomes a supernatural demon-type with red eyes – the possibilities of a
paranormal character and storyline is pretty tempting for any writer, and we do
have to remember that Willow operates in a world where vampires are real from
day one. So her role as a witch is always an interesting one, because Buffy
mixes “real” occultism and Wicca, in Willow’s case, with storybook fantasy
magic throughout the series. Hard to do but obviously Joss Whedon is a god.
So
apart from being a brilliant representation of a young lesbian, with a
sensitive and realistic relationship, Willow learns how to be a witch, and gets better over time. She’s bookish and
reads a lot. She tries stuff out and gets it wrong. Her personal power develops because of her
commitment rather than she just wakes up one day and poof! She’s a witch. Magic
for Willow is not something she is born with or is bestowed by some kind of paranormal
process. She works at it. Also, at one stage in the series, she has a virtual
circle of fellow witches that help her cast spells online. This is in fact
mirrored now by a number of virtual groups getting together to mediate and run
healing sessions online. I remember thinking at the time how cool it was that
Willow did that – boom, years later, I’m attending Goddess Healing Meditation
via facebook on a Sunday night, 9pm-9.30pm.
2.
Sandra
Bullock as Sally in Practical Magic
Oh
to be Sally in this film. Not only does she have just the most perfect hair in
the world, but she has that lovely little herbal pharmacy-come-White
Company-shop and makes lots of semi-medicinal potions in smart shiny bottles,
and hooks up with a hot odd-eyed policeman at the end. What’s not to love?
Apart
from the hair and the toiletries, what I really love about Practical Magic is
that Sally belongs to a family of witches that are at least a little depicted
as witches that do realistic things like attend seasonal festivals and help out
local women with their love lives. Oh, and grow plants. (I love the earth
energy in this film). The bringing the man back from the dead spell is
obviously fluff, and irritating because they (presumably deliberately)
mispronounce the Goddess they are appealing to for help as Heck-tate instead of
Hecate – Heck-ah-tee, Greek goddess of magic, witches, the moon.
Still,
midnight margaritas with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing? Yes please.
3.
Fairuza
Balk as Nancy Downs in The Craft
In
1996, The Craft happened. I was 19, and already a wannabe
witch.
Oddly,
I didn’t really rate The Craft when I first saw it. I think it
was because (spoiler alert) Nancy goes mad at the end of the film from being
possessed by a made-up god, and I thought that was some kind of unnecessary
party-pooper warning about the dangers of witchcraft. Despite that bit, the
film has a great emphasis on four teen girls forming their own coven and,
particularly in one scene, dedicating themselves to being witches in a
thoughtful and semi-accurate way: being outside, somewhere beautiful; calling
in the elements:
Nancy: Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the
East, the powers of air and invention. Hear me! Us! Hear us!
Bonnie: Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the
South, the powers of fire and feeling. Hear us.
Rochelle: Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the
West, powers of water and intuition. Hear us.
Sarah: Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the
North, by the powers of mother and earth. Hear us.
Nancy: Aid us in our magical workings on this May's
eve.
Nancy,
despite being the “bad” character who “goes too far” with the magic and ends up
in a bad way, is pleasingly gothy, punky and troubled, and has the advantage as
a fictional witch of being someone that, again, learns how do magic rather than
someone that has exceptional natural powers, which is often the go-to approach
for witch fitch (my term), and the case for her fellow character, “good” witch,
Sarah. She is the one that takes the girls to their local new age shop (which,
apparently, in real life, she bought). The film apparently had a Wiccan high
priestess as an advisor, and you can see it in the detail of the rituals they
conduct and the overall philosophy they follow, though only so far of course.
Nancy is by far the coolest character in The
Craft, and I think subconsciously I based my character Demelza at least a
little on her.
4.
Vivienne
Le Fay Morgan / Morgan Le Fay
The
archetypal witch, Morgan Le Fay – Morgan of the Fairies – is Queen of Magic.
Enchantress and sister of Arthur, she is represented in a variety of positive
and not-so-positive ways by a number of authors. In Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon and Fay Sampson’s Daughter of Tintagel, she is a priestess
of the Old Religion. In some poetry she is more the Goddess herself. In Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Geraldine
McEwan plays her as Morgana, a batty old crone with crazy hair living in a
subterranean dry-iced lair, sticking her talons into eggs full of blood (wherever
one would get THOSE - the blood looks suspiciously like sweet & sour sauce.
Ohhh the production value). Eva Green
played a gorgeous seductress Morgana Pendragon in the (criminally, in my view –
it was brilliant, much better than the BBC’s crap Merlin) discontinued TV series Camelot.
My
favourite, though, is Dion Fortune’s Vivienne Le Fay Morgan, witch and Sea
Priestess, in the books The Sea Priestess
and Moon Magic. She’s a proper witch,
knowing the mysteries of the sea, and inducting a clueless civil servant type
into sea and moon magic whilst all the time it’s implicated that she is the
original timeless Morgan Le Fay herself, Queen of Magic. Tinglingly good.
5.
Gloria
and Stella in Switch
Switch
was another series that never made it past the first series, and it really
should have because it was/is (you can still see it on Netflix) absolutely
brilliant. The premise is that four young witches share a flat in Camden and do
magic (admittedly of the finding a boyfriend sort) by getting together over a
large cooking pot, chucking some random herbs in it and joining hands for a
“SWITCH”. The good thing about it is, though, as well as featuring a black
character and a lesbian, and being funny and well-written, that the four
characters represent (very clearly, IMO) earth, air, fire and water. So, Stella
(Lacey Turner in a pleasant change from Eastenders) is earth and is businessy,
works in advertising, wears nice clothes, has plenty of money. Jude’s a sexy,
creative Leo; Grace is a sensitive, caring water sign and Hannah’s an airy free
spirit traveller.
The
other thing I loved about it was Gloria, Grace’s mum, played by Caroline
Quentin, is a wonderful, warm, funny and pretty well depicted pagan mum that’s
involved in a the community, and appears in a couple of episodes chivvying the
girls along to be better witches and to come and take part in a solstice.
6.
The
Halliwell sisters in Charmed
I can’t really narrow it down to one of them. I loved them all. If I had
to pick… Piper, probably. She owns a bar and she’s got the best hair. Again, a
mega series of the 90s, now.
About the Author: Anna McKerrow works on creative writing projects for the reading charity Booktrust, which is where she became interested in Young Adult fiction. (It wasn’t around when she was 15; she went straight from Judy Blume to Jackie Collins). She has also published four volumes of poetry and teaches creative writing in adult education. Anna is interested in all things magical, reads the tarot and is a Reiki healer. Her favourite place in the world is Glastonbury, and she loves the sacred sites of the south west of England, where she grew up. She believes passionately, like Alan Moore, that creative activities such as writing are a kind of magic in themselves.
The Bound (The Ascension #2) 
