I read witchy fiction. I write witchy fiction. I even started writing a whole series because of someone else’s witches. So why couldn’t I tell you what draws me to them?
About this episode
In this first episode of The Wild Between, I follow that question from a summer spent reading T. J. Green's White Haven Witches to the Welsh folklore behind my own Witches of Môrlan series. Along the way, I wonder whether it was ever really about women and power, and why Alice Hoffman's bookshop stories hit the same spot without a single witch in sight. I also look at how Nora Roberts's Three Sisters trilogy and Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg show just how personal magic can be.
The answer I landed on wasn't quite the one I expected. (Which, honestly, is the best kind of answer to find.)
Books mentioned
White Haven Witches series by T. J. Green [link]
Once Upon a Time Bookshop Stories by Alice Hoffman [link]
Three Sisters Island trilogy by Nora Roberts [link]
Terry Pratchett's Witches novels, part of the Discworld series [link]
The Witches of Môrlan by me, starting with Stormbound [link]
Some of these are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Over to you
What draws you to witchy fiction? Is it the witches themselves, or the magic underneath them? And if witches aren't your thing, what kind of story do you keep going back to without quite knowing why?
I'd genuinely love to hear. Leave a comment below or find me on Instagram or Facebook I'm hoping to share some of your answers in a future episode.
Stay in touch
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And if you're curious how my own answer plays out in practice, The Witches of Môrlan is where witches, Welsh folklore and very personal magic all meet. Start with Stormbound.
Transcript
I've been thinking about witches.
Which, I'll admit, isn't the most surprising thing to hear in October. Hallowe’en's nearly here, or actually here as I’m sending this episode out on Hallowe’en. And you can't nip to the shops at the moment without walking past a pointy hat or a plastic cauldron.
But I've been thinking about them for a slightly different reason.
I read a lot of witchy fiction. I write it, too. I've spent years in the company of fictional witches, and a little while ago it occurred to me that I've never actually asked myself why.
Why witches? What is it that keeps pulling me back?
I don't know. Not really. And that seems like a pretty good place to start a podcast, actually. With a question I can't answer.
Welcome to The Wild Between. This is a podcast about the space between a story and the person reading it: the things we love about fiction, the things that get under our skin, and the questions that only show up when we stop and look a little closer.
I'm not here to tell you what a book means. I'm here because I'm curious about why stories do what they do to us. And today, I'm starting with witches.
Here's something I have rarely said out loud before.
The Witches of Môrlan exists because of someone else's witches.
In the summer of 2023, I was ill. I mean properly ill, the kind where you can’t do much more than lie in bed and read, whilst sweating your way through the summer heat and regretting the fact that you’re stuck indoors on such beautiful days. And I spent a lot of that summer with T. J. Green's White Haven Witches.
Now, if you haven't read them, they're set in Cornwall, and they're fun, busy books about a group of witches who all have very different kinds of magic. My favourite is Briar, an earth witch who's happiest in the woods because the woods are also my happy place. There's a water witch who does magic while he's surfing, almost without noticing, and a fire witch who makes jewellery.
I loved them. They were exactly what I needed that summer.
But somewhere in the middle of reading them, I caught myself wishing for something that they were never trying to be. I wanted that kind of story set in Wales, built on Welsh folklore. Because we have so much of it (honestly, maybe a bit more than we know what to do with), and it's so rarely used well.
So, I wrote it. Took me a few years but I now have three books out in the series with the fourth coming soon (Tide Kept will be released on 28-Dec-26).
Which means you'd think I'd know exactly why I love witches. I started a whole series because of them.
And still I couldn't tell you.
If you ask people why witches are so popular, there's one answer you'll probably hear a lot. Witches are about women and power.
And I get it. For a very long time, "witch" was what you called a woman who had more knowledge, or more independence, or more power than the people around her were comfortable with. Taking that figure back and making her the hero is a big part of why witch stories mean so much to so many readers.
So I went back and I asked myself whether that's what I'm looking for.
And if I'm honest, I don't think it is. Not mainly, anyway.
One of the things I liked most about White Haven was that some of the witches are men. It felt completely natural. Nobody made a point of it. Magic wasn't a woman-only club, and the men weren't villains or somehow less worthy for having it.
If my love of witches were really about women having power, I think that would have niggled at me a bit. And it didn't. It felt right.
Which made me wonder whether I'd been asking the wrong question all along.
And then there's Alice Hoffman's Once Upon a Time Bookshop stories.
There are no witches in them. Not one. But they still have that feeling: the sense that the world is a bit stranger than it looks, and that something wonderful might be tucked just round the corner.
I liked that the magic showed up through recipes, through remembering how, in her childhood, she’d viewed the world. And I loved them for exactly the same reason I loved White Haven.
And that's when it clicked. Maybe it was never really the witches I was drawn to. Maybe it's the magic.
That might sound like splitting hairs, but I don't think it is. A witch is a person. She has a personality, a history, people she loves and choices to make. Magic is something else. Magic is a possibility.
It's the possibility that the world holds more than we can see. That there might be something extraordinary hiding inside an ordinary life, if only you knew where to look.
I think that's what keeps me coming back. Witches just happen to be one of the best ways of getting there.
Of course, magic on its own isn't a story. It gets interesting when you ask what it means to the person who has it.
Nora Roberts's Three Sisters Island trilogy is a lovely example of this. It follows three women on a small island whose lives are tied to an old prophecy. They all have magic, and they all feel completely differently about it.
Mia knows exactly who she is and what she can do, and she embraces it. Nell has been badly hurt in a past relationship, and her story is really about learning to trust herself again. Her magic is part of that, but it isn't what makes her worth something. She was worth something all along. And then there's Ripley, a police officer, forceful and practical, who is frankly terrified of her magic after it nearly causes an accident.
Same gift, three very different reactions. For one of them, power feels like freedom. For another, it's something she has to grow into. For the third, it's something to be afraid of.
And that feels true, doesn't it? Even though we're talking about something fantastical. We don't all respond to the same things in the same way, and something that makes one person feel capable can make someone else feel exposed.
I think that's one of the things magic is really good at. It takes something that usually lives on the inside like confidence, fear, self-doubt, wanting to be in contro, and gives it a shape you can see. Ripley isn't just worried about what she might do. She might actually do it.
You don't need magic to write about any of that, obviously. But it gives us a bit of distance. We can watch a character wrestle with power without having to make those choices ourselves. And sometimes, from a distance, we recognise something surprisingly familiar.
Which brings me back to my own witches.
The Witches of Môrlan is set in a fictional corner of Pembrokeshire, and it's rooted in Welsh folklore and the old cunning woman traditions. I am a big fan of the old folklore of … anywhere in the world, actually. I grew up reading all of them: the Norse, the Greek, the Roman, the Welsh, the British, the African, and the Native American. I have had a rather unorthodox education in folklore from around the world from when I was very young. I think my earliest book was given to me when I was five or six. But they have never lost their fascination to me.
I love how things like the Cŵn Annwn, who look like dogs, are something so much more. And I think that’s where a lot of my fascination lies: in the juxtaposition.
When I started building the magic, I knew one thing for certain. I didn't want everyone to follow the same set of rules.
In Môrlan, magic is personal. It's instinctive, and it's shaped by the person using it. My witches don't need a particular tool, or the right words in the right order. Magic is the tool, but the person using it matters.
I'm also very careful that it isn't a fix-all. I don't want anyone to be able to click their fingers and make the problem go away. Power costs something, and choices have consequences.
Looking back, I think that's the Three Sisters idea again, really. If magic is personal, then it's tied up with how a character sees themselves. What do they think they can do? What will they refuse to do, even when they could? And what happens when they've got their own abilities completely wrong?
And I also have to add that a lot of that probably also comes from the great, the late, Terry Pratchett. I am a huge fan of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg and a lot of what I write about has been heavily influenced by his Discworld books.
So, yes, those are the questions I find myself writing towards: what happens when they've got their own abilities completely wrong? What do they think they can do, and what will they refuse to do, even when they could? Not the spell, I’m not writing towards the spell, but the person casting it. Which, now that I say it out loud, probably tells you more about me than it does about witches.
So, why am I so drawn to witches?
I don't think it's mainly about women and power, though I completely understand why that matters so much to a lot of readers and I am a fan of the idea. And I don't think it's only escapism, either.
I think it's this: I love stories that suggest the world is more than most people experience because that’s kind of how I experience the world. That if you can just find the right corner, you'll see the magic too.
Witches are one of the best ways to get into that feeling. They're the people who've found the corner. Sometimes they live there quite comfortably, and sometimes it turns their lives upside down. But either way, they show us that it's there.
Folklore does the same thing for me, which is probably why I ended up putting the two together.
So, that's my answer, for now. I'm sure it'll shift. I could probably read another dozen witchy books and change my mind a couple of times (which, honestly, I'm quite happy to do).
But here's what I've noticed. I've loved these stories for years without ever needing to explain why. And it's only now, when I've finally stopped to look, that I can see it wasn't quite what I thought it was.
This has been the first episode of The Wild Between: Exploring the Magic in Fiction.
Before you go, I'd love you to think about something. If you read witchy fiction, what is it that draws you in, really? Is it the witches themselves, or something underneath?
And if witches aren't your thing, maybe there's another kind of story you keep going back to without ever quite asking why.
You don't need an answer. Sometimes it's enough just to notice the question.
But if you’d like to tell me, you can find me @toriahowellauthor on Instagram, or you can drop me an email at podcast@toriahowell.com. I’d genuinely love to hear what you have to say on this..
Thank you for spending this time with me. Until next time, keep being curious about the stories you love, and about what happens in the space between the story and you.
Now, I’m off to put the kettle on.
