The Witch with Nine Lives
A Dysfunctional Family of Witches, #1
by B. Austin
Date of Publication: August 27th 2020
Publisher: Spellbound Books
Cover Artist: B. Austin
Genre: Paranormal, Urban, YA, Horror
ASIN: B08BHSJ2RW
Number of pages: 263
Word Count: 58,319
BLURB
Medea turns into a cat at night, due to her mother's curse. Her mother, Dima, has a shapeshifting stone. She is 130-years-old but appears to be 18, nearly the same age as her two daughters.
Nikki works as a maid, rather than in the family witchcraft business of fortune-telling, seances, and other witchery-for-hire. She was born a Marilyn-Monroe lookalike. Despite her beauty, jealousy eats away at Nikki because her mother and sister have magic. Nor is Nikki allowed near the books of spells, enchantments, and potions Dima stole from Russian monks.
Medea is tortured by a secret that can destroy the sisterly tie between her and Nikki.
Unknown to her family, Nikki, is developing a magical gift which she cannot control, a sorcery that will threaten Medea and pit two powerful sisters against each other.
The Witch with Nine Lives
A Dysfunctional Family of Witches Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Nikki held her
dead sister in her arms, a cat named Medea. It was only because of her youngest
daughter, well now her only daughter, that their mother attended this makeshift
funeral. Dima should be working. Luke Air Force Base in Glendale was open.
There was money to be made dancing with solders. Most paid good money for Dima
to gaze into a crystal ball and tell the men their futures.
Bah, this is a
waste of my time, having a funeral for Medea. Dima frowned at the dead
Abyssinian cat. The different-colored eyes were glazed over in death and the
tongue was hanging out. Dima turned her head away. She felt guilty for having
cast a spell on her oldest daughter to begin with. It was for her own good. She
may have been just a teenager, but the mafia wanted her dead.
Almost 24 hours
passed since Nikki found Medea dead in the backyard. The girl had run into the
house screaming, carrying her dead sister in her arms, the cat’s arms dangling
and the head hanging. The eyes were open and still. Nikki had been hysterical
until Dima slapped her.
Once more, Nikki
cried over her furry sister. The girl seemed to like her sister more now that
Medea was dead.
Dima yanked a
shapeshifting stone from her pocket. She ordered the stone to shapeshift into a
shovel. She then dug a small grave.
Nikki gently
placed her sister in the small, shallow grave.
The emotional
upset of seeing her eldest daughter lying dead with a pile of dirt beside the
open grave, caused Dima to transform from a sexy, 18-year-old to her true self,
a 130-year-old hag. Quick, she grabbed the shovel which then melted into her
hands and reformed as the shapeshifting stone. She clutched the stone and spun
until she was once more an 18-year-old beauty.
It was almost
midnight at the small, private Russian Molokan Cemetery located at 75th and
Maryland Avenue in Glendale, Arizona. There was a full moon, so there was
plenty of light shining on the grave.
“Why couldn’t we
have a coffin?” Nikki again asked.
“Your sister
always liked the dirt. Remember how she would dig with her claws?” Dima said.
“Yes, but that
was so she could use the bathroom outside,” Nikki pointed out.
“Well, you
really shouldn’t cry over a sister who used her tongue as toilet paper,” Dima
said. “Medea was inferior.”
Nikki glared at
her. “Medea was a cat because of you.”
“Well, if Medea
had not been an outdoor cat, but stayed indoors, she might have lived a few
years longer, if not for you,” Dima said.
Now, it was
Nikki’s turn to look guilty.
The moon moved
directly above them, signaling that it was now midnight.
Dima screeched
and pointed at the grave. Moonlight was shining on the cat, which had
transformed from a brown Abyssinian cat into a black kitten.
“Medea’s come
back to life!” Nikki clapped her hands with joy.
Dima, on the
other hand, was so shocked that she dropped Pompeii, her shapeshifting stone.
She again transformed from a young woman to an ancient one. Her boobs were
sagging past her waist. Her hair was but a few sparse white hairs. Dima lifted
her head so that she could see because her wrinkly eyelids blurred her vision,
not to mention the cataracts; oh, the cataracts, and the arthritis in her
gnarled hands. Her back was hunched over. Dima ached with more than a century
and a quarter of living, and none of it as the granddaughter of Catherine the
Great of Russia. Dima was born with signs that she would be a witch, which
freaked out her royal family, so her bastard mother threw her away.
Well, enough of
bad memories. Medea was reborn!
The kitten sat
up and stretched, arching its back. She wasn’t exactly a newborn kitten. Medea
appeared to be the size of a four-month-old kitten.
Dima stooped to
pick up the shapeshifting stone.
The kitten was
faster and jumped on the stone, sitting on the rock.
Dima jumped out
of the way because the kitten scratched at her ankles.
Dima growled low
in her throat. “I see dying hasn’t improved your bad manners, Medea. You are
still headstrong though you must weigh all of three pounds. Move, or I’ll smack
you with a newspaper.”
Seventeen cats,
some old, some young, surrounded them, hissing at Dima. Of course, the cats
attended Medea’s funeral. She was their leader.
Traitors, Dima
thought. The older cats had once been loyal to her, but that was before she
turned her daughter into a cat.
Dima took a step
back. Medea may have been reborn as a black cat, but her eyes were still the
same, one eye being amber in color and the other eye emerald-green. The two
different colors were a sign of magic. Medea was still a witch and power still
flowed in her kitty veins.
The kitten
laughed. “Come now, mother,” Medea said in a kittenish, human voice. Medea
apparently had the memories of her past life. “It won’t hurt you to stay your
own age, for an hour or so. This is my wish for my birthday.”
“You don’t get a
second birthday,” Dima snarled.
“Yes, she does,”
Nikki protested. “Medea has now been born twice.”
Author Info
Belinda has fun creating both researched and original magic in her books. She grew up in New Mexico, a Southwestern state known as the Land of Enchantment with a long history of Native American and Spanish witchcraft. Growing up, she heard spell-binding tales about magic and real witches, magic sometimes witnessed by family members. Belinda has a friend in Albuquerque who is a modern-day witch. Belinda is a former Software Engineer / Web Applications Developer. She has a degree in Applied Mathematics. She did not have to do research when it comes to dysfunctional families. Her father was a bigamist with two wives and two sets of children.
The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with B. Austin . . .
How would you describe you style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
My writing is very visual, and some reviewers have stated that reading one of my books is like watching a movie.
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
Writing comes natural to me. I can write any day, at any time. I don’t believe in writer’s block, for me anyway. If I get stuck, I simply leave my computer knowing that whatever I’m working on will be solved in the morning without me ever having to think about it. I firmly believe that my subconsciouses are working on my books. Because of this, if I spend a few days away from the book, when I sit down to write, the words come fast. My writing comes out in full sentences; I hear the characters voices speaking to me, the dialogue, in sentences the way a real person would speak in a given situation. I am very visual and can see the scenes unfold.
Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character during story creation?
I don’t ever people watch to help with development. In my opinion, almost no real-life person makes a good character for a work of fiction. My father and an uncle were the only two people I’ve ever known who made good characters because they were so outrageous.
My characters are developed as I create the story.
What are some of your writing/publishing goals for this year?
I currently have three of my books in audio and Undying Witch and The Witch with Nine Lives in production. I’m planning to have four other books narrated, along with all the other books I write this year. My goal is to publish all seven books in A Dysfunctional Family of Witches in the next year, so the next five.
I’m currently writing the third book, Witch Daughter, in the series.
I, also, plan to write a third memoir in my series Memoirs of a Bigamist’s Daughter, which is entitled After Daddy Left.
Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere, money is not a concern? What would you do with this time?
The Greek Islands looked so beautiful in Mama Mia. I would like to take a Mediterranean Cruise and go island hopping. To be able to see the Greek ruins would be awesome. I’m especially fond of Greek and Roman Mythology. I would sit at a table, sometimes looking at the blue Mediterranean, and write
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