The Shetland Witch and Stories from the Shetland Witch (The Peachfield Press, out now).
Kate Macdonald is a literary historian, editor, critic, and good friend who helped me with (very!) last minute edits to Menewood. She founded and for several years ran Handheld Press—a wonderful small press focused on selling stories mostly, but not wholly, by women from (often, but not always) the early 20th century that are unfairly out of print: fiction and nonfiction ranging from thrillers to women's weird to biography to fantasy to disability to queer fiction. These are great books: Sylvia Townsend Warner, John Buchan, Rose Macauley, Vonda McIntyre... Handheld also briefly experimented with new fiction—including my own So Lucky—but found that wasn't really their strong suit, so went back to focusing on the wonderful classics that deserve new audiences.
In 2019 Kate began writing a short story about witches in Shetland. To quote her: "It grew. She got an agent. The agent spent two years pitching The Shetland Witch, but these were the immediate post-Covid years when the publishing industry was swamped with everyone else's novels written during the pandemic. In autumn 2023 Kate began serialising The Shetland Witch on Substack. In early 2024 she began serialising the two Shetland Witch novellas, In Achaea and Mrs Sinclair and the Haa, to her paying subscribers. Her subscriber numbers rocketed. The time had come to go to print."
The Shetland Witch, and Stories from The Shetland Witch, both published yesterday as an ebook, paperback and hardcover. In the UK, order here, and here in the US. And also from Peachfield Press.
As Kate would say, "Come for the magic and the archaeology, stay for the mythic creatures and a malignant trow."
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