Welcome to the latest installment of the Witches Save the World Micro-Interviews! In honor of the upcoming Halloween/Samhain holiday, and in celebration of the release of Witches Save the World, Forests Haunted By Holiness will be featuring a series of interviews with the contributors throughout October.
Witches Save the World was a labor of love. Across these two volumes you will find poems, short stories, and essays celebrating the witch and their role as wisdom keeper, protector of nature, avenger of the forgotten, and defender of the oppressed. Individual poems and stories range from historical fantasy to contemporary horror to science fiction, with many questioning the nature and cost of honor, integrity, and freedom.
In concert with these interviews, one physical copy of Witches Save the World — either Hags, Harridans, and Hexes Gone Right or Covens, Cauldrons, and Curses Gone Right— will be given away at the end of the month! Two books, two winners! To enter the drawing, just comment below and share the interview on your favorite social media platform.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Forests Haunted By Holiness: What is the title of your story and can you give us a spoiler-free summary?
Neil Willcox: My story is named “Universal Justice.” Angela Brooks is trying to ignore the signals the universe is giving her to get to a dog walking job, when she stumbles onto a crime scene. As everything is connected, she figures out what’s going on, despite the scepticism of the police. That leaves the problem of what to do about it, when her help is unwelcome – and Mac needs to be taken for walkies.
FHBH: How did you go about writing your story? Lot of research? Or did you just wing it?
NW: This was very light on research, in part because it draws on several real events. For a while I worked at a school on a main road, and occasionally there had been a crash with the footpath on one side or the other taped off. Inevitably there would be rumours about what had happened – lurid from the students, more grounded from the staff. The actual ducking under the crime scene tape and being yelled at happened to someone else; like Angela they had thought it was there for roadworks that had not yet materialised.
Mac is not based on any dog in particular, though he might seem familiar to some I’ve known. Similarly the crime is not based on any singular real one. Based on the rather sketchy details, I’m afraid it’s sadly common.
FHBH: What draws you to the character and theme of “the witch”? What do you find so compelling about it?
NW: My personal rule for writing about an occult detective is that they should be trying to do something else when the unexpected forces itself upon them. A classic witch is a good example of this. Magic of home and hearth, inwardly focussed – until the outside world impinges upon them.
I don’t practice magic and the universe doesn’t speak to me in the way this story does. Yet there are moments when details come together like revelation. Turn that experience up to the maximum, then a little more – well that would probably be the world Angela Brooks lives in.
