Art: John Atkinson Grimshaw
“Where corpse-light
Dances bright,
Be it day or night
Be it by light or dark,
There shall corpse lie stiff and stark.”
— Sir Walter Scott
So begins The Raven Spell, book one of the two-book series, A Conspiracy of Magic. The book takes place in a fantasy version of London, 1899. This novel is a conglomeration of so many subjects that pique my interest, from mudlarking, to magic, to the Victorian era and its last grip on a world before electric lights and automobiles took over.
And on a more personal level, the concept of memories and how they make up who we are as individuals became a point of fascination for me after watching my mother slip away from Alzheimers. For years she had no idea who I was, which made me wonder at times if that still made her her, the woman who read me all those Mother Goose rhymes when I was a child. Who are we without our memories? Without all those connections to the people and places we’ve known and lived our whole lives?
Earlier I wrote that the initial idea for The Raven Spell was sparked by photos I saw on Twitter. But it’s equally true that the heart of the novel’s premise was inspired by my response to watching my mother have her memory stolen from her. If you’ve read the novel, you know one of the sisters has the ability to take the memories from the dead as the corpse-lights rise off the body. Of course, sometimes she takes from the not yet dead too, as we see when the novel begins.
**I’d also like to add a big thank you to all the readers and reviewers who have already picked up a copy of The Raven Spell during the First Reads preview on Amazon!! Regular sales of the book will begin on February 1st.
