Now that the completed story of The Witching has been available online through Kindle Vella for some time now, I thought that I would write a little bit about the inspiration behind the story.
If you read the reviews, you will note that some liken the story to the hit television show Charmed. They are accurate in the sense that a skeleton idea was formed from watching it back in the ‘90’s. It was what I like to term, a guilty pleasure. One of those shows that are a bit mindless but fun nonetheless. Three sisters who dealt with the knowledge that they were powerful witches. When you come right down to it, however, this theme is prevalent throughout various movies, television shows, comic books, novels, you name it. The human reaction when faced with dealing with superhuman powers (or magical ones) that develop overnight.
I suppose The Witching was truly born years ago when I was a kid watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra, the Herculoids, X-Men, The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers…I can list the Saturday morning line-up for paragraphs, but I think you get the idea. My imagination was flooded with stories of supernatural and superhuman characters. These stories continued throughout my adult life filling me with even more science fiction and fantasy worlds. Each time, I think to myself – “what if?”
From Charmed, I have garnered more of the family unit as inspiration. But that’s basically where it starts and ends. I also wanted to tackle some other things that are easily glossed over in that show, and others like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, yet I wanted to enhance other issues that were touched upon in the first few seasons of Angel and mentioned in other fantasy shows like Supernatural, Legacies, and Twinx. But it was really after watching Netflix’s retelling of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Iron Fist, and a more recent superhero show Raising Dion that it clicked.
What these later shows highlight is not just the inner struggle these characters have but also the real-world implications surrounding the use of their powers. I always thought many of the earlier shows I mentioned were far too convenient. The bad guys went up in a puff of smoke, were reduced to ashes, or melted away into a pile of goo. All in time to party the night away or get back to work. Few ever answered what I refer to as “the body problem.” And there was my “what if.”
What if the body remained?
What if there was an investigation surrounding the body?
And all of this leads to another question as to how will they deal with it. Both mentally (I mean, they did just kill someone/something), and legally.
I always thought that too many of these aforementioned shows also glossed over the bad guys. The tropes were over the top with good vs evil, angels vs demons. Few dealt with the grey area. How do you differentiate between the two? Modern society dictates that murder equals bad hence evil yet if someone good kills something, is it still murder?
These are just some of the questions I ask myself when generating a story. These questions I’ve tackled in other stories and continue to tackle in current ones. I’m sure I will continue this theme until I feel that I have gotten it right.
Of course, I also tried to make The Witching a bit light. I have always found it too convenient for injuries and illnesses to be magically waved away. The heroes wouldn’t care about risking life and limb if there truly was no real threat. Where’s the fun if the hero will always be saved by a magical or angelic being? Yes, many of these shows also deal with the death of beloved characters, but they are few and far between.
I could go on and on about the inspiration for the novella, but I want to leave it at this. The Witching was an experiment for me as I tried a new platform, Kindle Vella (serial novels), and I was adapting to episode length, and the ability to write weekly again. As I am publishing this, Amazon has already entered the second stage of their launch for the platform opening it up to Android users within the Kindle app. Soon, it will be released worldwide.
If you haven’t started reading it yet, you can start reading free at the links provided. Also, you can catch up with my newest story, Pandora’s Legacy which dives deep into mythology. (I am having so much fun with that one!)
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