Anna Dressed In Blood - Modern Witches and Witchcraft in K. Blake's Fiction

“It isn’t going to work. I can’t cast the circle. I’ve never had the knack for witchcraft. Mom must’ve told you. I messed up her Beltane cookies every year until I was seven.”  ("Anna Dressed in Blood", Ch. 13, Kendare Blake)

When I stumbled upon Kendare Blake's dark horror story, I expected some kind of violent fiction, full of characters' dark thoughts and intentions.. but it appeared to be a very pleasant read for a teenager age group, and okay, for adults, like me, though I don't feel like I am a grown up woman yet.

Most interesting for me in this story was a leitmotif of witchcraft (obviously!). The author creates a world where the souls are vengeful and like to kill and a hero who kills...  those vengeful souls. The hero's mother is  a witch who helps her son named Cas in his job of murdering the awoken dead. 

Cas calls his Mum a "mobile witch" because they move from one place to another quite frequently. She makes their living by "doing tarot card readings and aura cleansing over the phone, and selling occult supplies online". There might be some irony in those words about people believing in such things, but for Cas it is pretty much a reality of his life. 

I must say that the way Blake portrayed her witches is somehow close to what I got to know about modern witches's lives through some of my blogger friends. For us, people far from the practices of witchcraft (for the time being), what they do is what they believe in, this is their life, and it is not something to be afraid of or go away in disgust. Other story characters accept the fact of having witches as their neighbours totally normal and they are even not as much amazed to see the witches performing rituals accompanied by the ignition of flames out of nowhere or a tremor of the ground and so on.
Nevertheless the story's depiction of the witches is not free from representation in popular TV series. The witches control the weather, ignite flames, get inside your mind, and can destroy. I believe that the entertainment industry of course needs spectacular scenes, breath taking adventures, extraordinary characters. This could be the reason why the witches are presented in a such an "out of this world" way.
What I like about Blake's writing is that she has that witty irony through out the narrative. You can go by the extracted lines I gave in the very beginning of this post - messing up Beltane cookies? Oh my, that could be a catastrophe! But the author makes it feel like an ordinary thing (like burning an oatmeal cake), because it is such for her characters, and there is no exaggeration of the life of a modern witch.
"Anna Dressed in Blood" contains not only witches but also warlocks, one of them is a Cas's schoolmate, another - this schoolmate's granddad, who actually passed on the witchcraft skills to his grandson. So these two and Cas's mother make a magical team who fights with a powerful soul of an obeahman. There was also a good educational moment for me personally as I never knew who that was and had to read about it in the net. For me this novel was a novelty, a fresh insight into the modern witchcraft and a nice free from judgement depiction of what witches do or what they don't. 

Modern Witch - Transportation by ilura-menday-less

P.S. I have the 3d and the last post about Gogol's horror story in my mind, though I decided to switch to another witch in this post. Pannochka is yet to come! Stay tuned, my dears.

Yours sincerely,

Witchcraft and More.

The Saddest Little Zombie - Not a Cute One

Hello, my dear friends! Hope your days are great and full of things you enjoy to do. I do enjoy reading and, as it happens frequently, some new read finds you itself.

I was looking for some good point and click game in the net, and found one with oh so creepy pictures! Then I saw there was a link to a book, I followed it and met even creepier poem "The Saddest Little Zombie" by Douglas Clegg! Some of you might have heard about this author, for me however, his name is completely new. 

Well, so I'm talking about the book. As the author says himself, it's neither for kids nor for adults...then maybe for zombies? The content is indeed is not kind and sweet,  it's a not a story about a cute living dead chap. The illustrations by Glenn Chandbourne made me speechless, as they are way too expressive, but I liked this. The plot has many scary events which take place during the Christmas holidays. I find that the idea of the presence of something dreadful close to the most jolly time of the year is a reflection of our reality - while someone is happy and celebrating, others dying and suffering.

To my delight I can also include this poem in my research, as one of its characters is a French Voodoo Queen, who actually awakes the little zombie and unfortunately is stabbed by him on the spot. 

The story of course has big bits of irony in it too, and calls for not a "serious" reader, the one who will start complaining about the book's dark content. That's why I'm inviting you to go ahead and simply enjoy this modern dark poem, which you can download here on the author's website for free.