Waking the Witch: Guest Blog by Jessica Penot Plus a Giveaway

The idea for The Accidental Witch came to me while I was working one day. I worked on the psychiatric floor of a hospital as a therapist. I was running all the support groups and the group of patients on the floor that day were particularly sad and resistant to treatment. None of them had insurance or resources so we couldn’t refer them out to any place but the Mental Health Center. The MHC couldn’t see them for six months. It was pretty dismal. My boss looked at me and said, “I wish I had a magic wand so I could just fix everything for these people.” I wished I did to. 

I began writing the next day. I wrote about a psychologist who got so desperate she used the dark arts to help her patient population. At first, things go well for her. Her patients get better and find all the resources they need. Her sex life takes a turn for the better and she begins to feel good about herself, but the magic takes a dark turn and an old demon ends up taking residence in the little girl that lives next door to her. In order to fight the demon, she needs to enlist the help of a warlock and her mother, who turns out to be the baby eating witch from old fairy tales. 

 Writing the mental health end of this story was fairly easy for me, but writing about magic took me to new ground. I had to spend a considerable amount of time reading about magic and spellcraft. I had to learn about witches before I could turn my psychologist into one. I had to learn about them before I could wake the witch in my main character. It was an interesting journey for me and I ended up using a mixture of Southern folklore and old druid spells to create a magical landscape for my heroin to traverse. 

 In the end, it is surprising how easy it was for me to blend the worlds of magic and mental health. These things seem so far divided but they mixed seamlessly. Ghosts, witches, demons, and mental patients drift in and out of the landscape of my tale and pull my little witch deeper and deeper into a world of sex and magic until the only way out might be to pull herself to hell and back.






The Accidental WitchThe Darkest Arts SeriesBook 1Jessica Penot
Genre: Paranormal RomancePublisher: Lachesis Publishing
ASIN: B00GG83WLE 
Number of pages: 276Word Count: 85,000
All Romance eBook   Bookstrand   Kindle UK   
Kindle US  Lachesis Publishing Inc   OmniLit
Book Description:
Phaedra Michaels is a small town psychologist who is beginning to lose hope. Two of her patients at the local hospital in Dismal, Alabama have just killed themselves, she’s still reeling from her divorce and what turned out to be a disastrous marriage, and her father has died, leaving her without any notion of who her real mother is. 
Just as Phaedra decides to commit herself to a serious drinking problem and an eating disorder, or two, a mysterious spell book arrives in the mail. Feeling desperate, Phaedra uses it to cast spells to save her fading patients. Suddenly, good things start happening.  Phaedra’s patients begin to get better and she even starts dating the sexy doctor from the hospital.
Phaedra is so happy she doesn't notice the small things that start to go wrong in Dismal, or the dark creatures slithering out of the shadows near her house. When Phaedra finally realizes her spells have attracted every card-carrying demon from hell, she has no choice but to accept help from a slightly nerdy, 500 year-old warlock with a penchant for wearing super hero T-shirts and a knack for getting under Phaedra’s skin. Now, if only she could get the hang of this witch thing, she might be able to save her town.   

About the Author: 
Jessica Penot is a therapist who lives in Alabama with her 2 corgis, cat, sons, husband and other strange creatures. She is the author of Haunted North Alabama, Haunted Chattanooga, and Circe.
www.jessicapenot.net
www.ghoststoriesandhauntedplaces.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/jessica.penot

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