A Witch In Winter – Review, Interview And Giveaway

Review:- I LOVED this book, I really did. I loved Anna, what a great main character she is, an every day girl who discovers she has amazing magic powers and is a witch. You can fully relate to her and I felt that this could happen to anyone. That there really is magic out there and I believe.

Witches are one of my favourite subjects, so this book was right up my street. A Witch in Winter is about a girl called Anna who moves to a town called Winter with her dad. They move to a run down old house which seems to be steeped in magic and history. Anna find a book of spells and casts one with her friends one night. Not believing anything would happen, but it does and she casts more and more until trying to fix what she did. Anna is a typical teenager, and I feel reading about her, I would have done similar things as a teenager. I have always loved magic and witches.

The love story that intertwines in this book is an unusual and one full of chemistry. I thought Seth was a great character, a bad boy image but with a heart of gold. Who will do anything to be with Anna. I feel these two are destined to be together.

The book’s main story line is a battle of good versus evil, but the lines have become a little blurred along the way, in determining what is good and what is evil. It is a great battle one which is scary and will keep you routed to your seat.

There is nothing in this book I would change or didn’t like, I loved every minute of it and couldn’t put it down until it was finished. The only one thing I would say, is that I wished it was longer, but thankfully it’s a trilogy and I cannot wait to read the next in the series.

I would recommend this book to everyone who likes a bit of romance and magic. A Witch In Winter is a great read, full of action, history and witchcraft, set in a magical place, with two fantastic characters sizzling with chemistry. 

There were lots of seeds, but the initial idea came when I was listening to the radio one day and I heard a programme about romance. The commentator was saying that the main challenge in modern romance is keeping the hero and heroine apart. And I was thinking that for me the main reason not to fall into someone’s arms would be if I wasn’t sure how they felt about me. And that’s when the idea of the spell at the heart of A Witch in Winter came into my head. It all just grew from there. 

Gosh – that’s hard to answer! I don’t know really. Everything. It could be a chance remark by a friend, or something that moves me, or a movie scene where I think “I would have written that SO differently”. A major source of inspiration is old myths and legends. There are a lot of seeds from English mythology sown through the Winter trilogy, if you know where to look. 

Either the first or the last! In both cases because you really feel the pressure that it has to be excellent. The first chapter has to suck people in – whether that’s an agent, an editor or a reader in a bookshop – and make them want to read on. Actually the last chapter is a bit of a fib, that one kind of wrote itself. It’s more the grand finale that was hard. I don’t want to post too many spoilers for people who haven’t read it, but A Witch in Winter ends in a really extended kind of… struggle (trying not to spoil here!) I spent a long time tweaking and editing that sequence because it was the climax of the book really, and had to feel like it. 

Both. When I sit down for a day’s writing I tend to read over what I wrote the day before (or the morning before, if I break for lunch) and I edit as I go, taking out spelling mistakes and changing phrases. Sometimes I’ll just delete the whole thing and start again. 

But when I’ve finished the book then I go right back to the beginning and do the big edits, the kind where you take out whole characters or change the course of events. Then I do line editing again. My spelling is pretty good but my punctuation is… sketchy. 

Always silence – or as close as I can get it. I don’t mind muted voices, like the TV on low, or the radio burbling in the background, but I can’t ignore music, I find I listen to the music and not the words on the page. I need to hear them in my head or it doesn’t flow.

Hmmm… another hard one. I always hoped as a child that I’d find a Psammead (from Five Children and It) – although he was very high maintenance. 

Even harder! I have too many: Nancy Mitford, Judith Kerr, Jane Austen, Stella Gibbons, Ford Madox Ford, Jerome K Jerome, Ursula Le Guin, Dorothy L Sayers, Philip Pullman, Colette, Emily Bronte, Diana Wynne Jones, John Donne, Rumer Godden, Julia Donaldon… I could go on all night. Literally. 

Um…. as a tiny child, probably anything by Shirley Hughes (Dogger still has the power to make me well up). As I got slightly older I loved the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and The Hobbit by Tolkein. I was also a MASSIVE Chalet School fan. 

Books 2 and 3 in the Winter Trilogy! 

Read whatever inspires you, then try to forget it all and write your own story. And most importantly, enjoy it – which is doubly important if you’re not being paid for it!

Giveaway:- For one lucky reader I have a copy of A Witch In Winter to win. All you have to do is be a follower of my blog, let me know how you follow it and leave me a comment saying which is your favourite fictional witch is. Don’t forget to leave me a way of contacting you if you win. 

UK entries only and it run until midnight on the 24th February 2012.

I’ll leave you with the video trailer for the book, which is amazing, just like the book.