Tuesday 1 January 2013

The season of the twistedwitch...

Hello 2013...

Well, the Mayan calendar turned out to be just a means of calculating the passage of time after all and a little like the millennium bug, a bit of a damp squib... But still, the end of 2012 may still have ushered in a new spiritual age of enlightenment and to be fair, 2013 isn't a bad year to start and there's lots of reason's why I consider this year to be the season of the Twistedwitch...

The superstition surrounding the number thirteen may have come from many sources; at the last supper thirteen sat at the table, twelve disciples and Jesus... On Friday 13th October 1307, the King of France, Philip IV ordered the arrest of the Knights Templar... There are thirteen turns in the knot on a hangman's noose and apparently any fewer and the knot would fail to offer a quick death... Many considered thirteen to be unlucky as witches covens were thought to traditionally have twelve members with the devil being the thirteenth...

But anyone interested in modern Wicca will tell you that a coven can be any size and that witchcraft has nothing to do with the devil. The number thirteen does tie in with the number of menstrual cycles which can occur in a calendar year and one in every three or four years has thirteen full moons, leading to the association of the number thirteen with female mysteries, the magical and the mystical.

So, any female readers and anyone interested in modern witchcraft should consider 2013 to be positively auspicious :)

And as for the Twistedwitch? Well, with two successful NaNoWriMo's beneath my belt, but one of them currently unfinished and a third novel stuck in editing limbo... I figured 2013 should really be the year that I knuckle down and put my money where my mouth is.

This year I'm going to finish The Bones Of The North Witch, the 2012 NaNo novel which still needs 20,000 - 30,000 words... I'll then edit/re-write From The Library Of Parker Prentis and do a final edit of Black Clothes, Blue Fire... And best of all... I'll finally get rid of this cold/flu that has been bugging me for the last two to three weeks.

I'm hoping to get back into daily writing practice and blog more often... With actual fiction... And actually post it so it can be *gulp* read by people...

So 2013 is going to be the season of the Twistedwitch... I expect you to kick my ass if you think I'm slacking...

What am I letting myself in for?

Happy New Year everyone, may it be productive, prosperous and magical.