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Whispers from the Witch

The leaves have fallen, the nights have grown longer and darker, and Lady Winter has brought her gifts of ice, snow, and freezing nights.
Come closer, Cauldron Crew, and gather around this fire. Let’s warm our weary hearts and minds, like the witches of yore, by the fire of stories—in the company of fictional men and women, unicorns and dragons, ghosts and werewolves, friends and foes.
Come, let me pull you into a world of my making, where I weave invisible threads of imagination around you as I whisper stories you never knew you needed to hear. Afterall, you are the lifeblood of the witch—the storyteller.
Welcome to my humble abode, to the witch’s hut, to the house of stories.
My name is… unnecessary. At least for the time being. I’m the witch with many names: Bruja, the wicked witch of the words. Names matter when you’re trying to find the perfect one for your characters, but for the storyteller? Methinks not. The storyteller, like a marionettist, should remain shrouded in mystery and hidden in the dark, holding the power but directing all attention to the marionettes. What matters here isn’t what I call myself; it’s that I tell stories, that I have many brewing in the dark cauldron of my mind, and that I’m ready to share them.
All through life—and it’s been a long one, me being a witch—I’ve been collecting words. Like a kid walking along the beach in search of shells and putting them in a plastic bag, I’ve been hoarding words inside my charm bag for years. Some are perfect, some chipped, all mine. Now it’s time to share them.
Forget about my name, my age, or where I come from. What you need to know is that I brew stories. It matters that you know, in my stories, I aim to create a cozy world—a place of calm, beauty, acceptance, love, and understanding. I aim to make real a love that is gentle, a love you can sit with in absolute silence while sharing a cup of tea—not the kind of passionate love that burns everything to the ground in a dashing frenzy.
It’s also important that you know why I write. There are two answers: one poetic, the other a bit selfish. I read somewhere, “If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it,” so I decided to write. I also write because I want to—because I owe it to myself, to the child I once was. This is me allowing myself to follow the Mistress of Dreams and fly on her witchy broom.
I’ve written so many first drafts that they could last us a lifetime. Hey, I haven’t dubbed myself a prolific first draft author for nothing. And with you as my witness, my Cauldron Crew, I vow to pick up those stories, dust them off, bring them to life, and share them with you. Maybe you won’t like them. Or maybe you’ll read them, take a moment to reflect, and feel that warm flutter in your heart, whispering, ‘Hey, I thought I was the only one…’.
“So, witch,” you might ask, “what ho? What’s the purpose of this newsletter?”
The purpose is simple: to put a spell on you.
To make you my enchanted Cauldron Crew and ask you to follow me on your brooms into the worlds I create; to fly over unknown oceans with me, slay dragons, dance with a thoroughly fictional lover, and travel through so many doors.
It’s more than just a newsletter—it’s a glimpse into the heart of my creative process: my struggles, thoughts, stories, and the progress we’ll share together, with you as my companion on this journey I’ve started.
With each change of season, I’ll send you a letter about the potions I’ve concocted, the stories I’ve brewed, the visions in my crystal ball, and treasures from my charm bag.
The only question is: “Will you join me on this journey?”

The Witch’s Evolution

Everything and everyone evolves one way or another in life. Even witches are affected by this.
In January, we set up our goals and plans for the year. You’re all probably familiar with the yearly Reading Challenge. Do you remember what your goals were when you first started reading? Has your goal changed since then?
A few years ago, my goal would’ve been 300, 250, and if I wanted to be eccentric, I’d probably have aimed for 280. And as crazy as it might sound now, I actually did that for a few consecutive years. Of course I did. I’m a witch—we’re not necessarily known for our healthiest and best decisions in life.
That’s a lot of books, I know. However, I’m not boasting—I’m making a point here. Evolution, remember?
Like many readers, I started as an omnivore—someone who devoured anything and everything with no filtering, no elimination, no screening system. To my starved brain, everything tasted good. I gobbled up words the way waves swallow the shore and reclaim the golden sand, the way a gambler chases their next win, or the way an alchemist searches for the elixir of life. That was the beginning. Through the years, the more I read, the more I understood myself and realized my personal taste. I started craving certain things, building a tolerance for others, developing a taste for some, and outright rejecting the rest.
Over time, I eliminated whole categories and got tired of certain tropes. This way, I built a comfort zone for myself that fit me to a T. And it worked. Imagine being safe and cozy in one aspect of your life, in a world that is constantly changing and enjoys your struggles vindictively. My comfort zone became my shelter. Everyone keeps telling you to get out of your comfort zone every witch-damned time! My advice? Don’t listen to them. They’re just jealous. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason. Grab onto it with all you’ve got and don’t ever let it go. I’m not saying never step outside of it—but build it well, so it’s a place you can always return to. A home, not a trap. But I digress.
As years passed, I changed some more. Reading was still vital to my daily life and routine, but now I was feeling restless. Why? Because it was time for me to tell my own stories. Was it Woolf who said, “Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river”?
Well, the words were ready to flow.
For years I’ve fed the story monster within, now it’s time to let the storytelling demon out to play.
Telling stories, though, is a time-consuming labor of creation. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. Becoming a novelist has always been a lifelong dream of mine. But a certain desperation always comes with creative work—the longing for your creation to already exist in the world. Writing being such a long process didn’t help either. The long road ahead discouraged me. And at the time, I still refused to sacrifice my reading hours for writing—losing reading was a loss I wasn’t ready for.
Immersing myself in other dreamers’ stories while postponing my own dreams of writing only made the restlessness grow. The bottled-up stories sat there waiting. So long, in fact, that by the time I decided to go back to them, many had already left—and most refused to return. Coincidentally, at that point, I no longer wanted to prioritize reading. My own stories had invaded my life, and I wanted to tell them.
In the war waged between my desire for writing and my desire for reading, reading always used to win. These days, mostly, the passion for telling my own stories wins. Back then, the thought of going a single day without reading horrified me, but now I can go days without it—not because I love it any less, but because I have to sit still and listen. Listen to my characters talk to me, tell me their stories. I guess I’ve come a long way. Writing is a different kind of hunger. It takes all your focus, even when you’re not writing a single word.
These days, I no longer measure my time in pages read, but in words written. I don’t take on reading challenges anymore. Instead, I challenge myself by writing.
Another change I’ve noticed is that I may be reading fewer books, but I read better now. I pick up only books from authors I know, trust, and love. I return to old favorites, and I read them differently—not as a reader, but as a writer. I dissect their sentences, examine the structure, and place each word under a magnifying glass.
I don’t just consume stories anymore—I study them. Books are no longer just a portal into magical worlds for me; they’re also a museum of wonder that I willingly go back to.
So, Cauldron Crew, now you know about my evolution—what about yours? Tell me your story. Where did you start? What was the book that pulled you in? And how have you changed since then?

One: He who gave me worlds to get lost in

I found Murakami’s 1Q84 in the ruins of my world, one cold, nasty summer day. Alone, terrified, vulnerable, I crawled between its pages, seeking shelter. And it saved me with lines like:
“If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.”

“I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.”

“Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”

Summer—once warm, beautiful, and lovely—stabbed me in the back. Instead of bringing joy, it robbed me. It became a grave—for my father, and for the part of my heart that died with him.
Talking is good, of course. Words can heal. But those days, the more I tried to explain my pain, the more misunderstood I felt—and the more alone. I became angrier. It felt like I was drowning, and everyone in the rescue boat just watched—no one ever reached out for me. They heard me, they nodded, they pitied me, but they didn’t see the pain weighing me down. 
They told me to be patient, that it would be okay. That added to my burden. 
Every night, sleep carried me into oblivion. Every morning, as the gentle arms of dreams receded, and I remembered it all over again, it felt like I was losing him for the first time. 
No one understands that you go to war with grief every day, that every morning brings heartache, and every night is filled with nightmares. 
So I stopped talking. 
I stopped my expectations.
But I continued to hurt.
In my misery, I crawled, bruised and broken, into a shelter that I wouldn’t leave for years.
1Q84 came to the rescue. Murakami’s mad world wrapped itself around me like a chrysalis, and allowed me to heal. That was only the beginning. Healing doesn’t happen in a day. It’s a long process. I say “heal” and it sounds final but it’s not—there are good days and there are bad days, and that’s just life. 
But at least I’d learned what could save me. 

Books. 
Words. 
Stories.