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?
Zachery Brasier: My story is “Card(16).” It follows a NASA guidance engineer named Melanie Axtell who is getting increasingly frustrated while working at the agency. She joined because she believed in the importance of space exploration, but has found herself disillusioned by culture war issues taking over the agency’s focus as well as the continual insistence that everything ultimately is about sending astronauts to Mars. Confused (because NASA was a lifelong dream), she is convinced by her best friend to see a tarot card reader to make sense of her future.
FHBH: How did you go about writing your story? Lot of research? Or did you just wing it?
ZB: I mostly was winging it. Melanie Axtell’s plight reflects some of my concerns with the current state of NASA. I’ve been fascinated with spaceflight my whole life, and as I’ve studied it more I’ve come to appreciate the almost mystical aspects of the whole venture. To take a metal vessel up to the moon feels like a metaphysical journey as much as a physical one.
However, between NASA getting involved in culture war issues and spaceflight being overtaken by billionaires such as Elon Musk, I have found it harder to connect with the aspects that I love.
Around mid-2025 I felt myself in a bit of a crisis, where nothing about this thing I used to love was bringing me any joy. I happened to be wandering through a bookstore and bought a book about astrology art. Flipping through the pages, I found myself marveling at the stars in the same way I had over the past few years. Through the art, I realized it was what I needed to rekindle the emotional core of space travel, what it meant to me and continues to mean to me. All it took was looking backwards to this older way of looking up.
That gave me the compulsion to write this story. I wanted to explore the idea that some of these older ways can provide as much of a human connection as actually sending people into space. That’s not to say that I believe one is better than another, but that there’s power in appreciating the older ways of understanding our universe, even if your skeptical about things like astrology. It provides insights into the way we live that raw technology and data might not.
FHBH: What draws you to the character and theme of “the witch”? What do you find so compelling about it?
ZB: To me, the witch represents parallel forms of experiencing reality. Often ostracized, she shows us that there are other ways of being, other ways of conceptualizing how we fit into the world at large. I find that very compelling. When I find myself trapped in certain ways of thinking or needing to approach something from a different perspective, the archetype of the witch becomes useful, it reminds me that there are always other paths to take, and that you are never truly stuck.
