If you're looking for a witchy read this season, I'm pleased to share this recent recommendation from POPSUGAR AU:
”Luanne G. Smith’s “The Vine Witch” is a bit more grown up than “ACOTAR,” but it’s packed with the same evocative world-building and magical conflicts. After years of struggling to break a terrible curse laid upon her, vine witch Elena is finally able to return to the vineyards, where the magic of witches like her has created some of the most famous wine in the world. When she returns, she learns that her beloved vineyard has been inherited by a skeptical stranger, and, even worse, there’s a hex on the vines that she’s not sure how to break.”
But, really, all of my books are ripe for the season. 🌙🍄✨🧙
One Month to Go!
Fantasy is one of those genres where multiple books in a series is the norm, but there's always that big gap between finishing the first book and waiting for the next one to drop. I often see an uptick in interest on the first book just before the second releases. I suspect there's a subset of readers who prefer to wait until a series is complete before diving in to the first book. I’m the same when I’m invested in a story. I gotta know what happens next!
The Order of the Seven Stars series will be complete when THE WOLF'S EYE publishes on May 14th. In case you're one of those readers who waits. 😉
Universal Magic
I recently had a reader write to me because she’d noticed small connections between some of my books. Since I have three different series of books out, she wondered if that was intentional. I was thrilled she’d noticed!
Yes, all of my books published to date are tangentially connected! The series are separated by decades and geography, but the magic is fairly consistent. The witches have auras to distinguish them from mortals, they use rhyming incantations to connect with the All Knowing, and there is a reliance on grimoires and herbs for concocting spells. But there are small but direct connections too.
[Minor spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the books yet]
For instance:
~ In The Raven Spell, Ian, the witch detective, had worked on a case years earlier that involved the mutilation of small animals and a poisoning attempt on Sir Henry Elvanfoot. Gruesome, yes, but it was meant as a hint about a certain murderer in The Vine Witch who’s using the same modus operandi. The Raven Spell takes place in 1899, ten years before the The Vine Witch in 1909, so this character was already up to no good! Afraid of being caught, they’d quickly absconded for mainland Europe.
~ More obviously, a character from The Vine Witch series shows up in The Witch’s Lens, which takes place in 1915. Yanis was the sorcerer helping Elena, Yvette, and Sidra in The Conjurer. Six years later he’s been reinstated with the Order of the Seven Stars and assigned to a special unit during WW1. There is a reference to Elena in The Witch’s Lens as well, as she is the one who devised the Lingua Franca spell that allows witches from different regions to communicate with each other during The Great War.
~There is also a vague reference to Sidra in The Wolf’s Eye when the character Hugo Reitman talks about having jinn he relies on for various tasks.
~ But maybe the biggest connection tying the three series together is the mention of Lady Everly’s Grimoire in each of the novels. I included it in each story because it was meant to represent the guidebook for witches across Europe at the time. The woman herself even makes an appearance in The Raven Song as host of a masked ball.
So those are some of the sneaky connections I included in the books. As always, if you have any questions or observations about any of my novels, feel free to ask either here using the website contact form or you can contact me on IG @writersmith1.