Karen Fox: Late Bloomer...

The minute I heard the title for Witch High, the story for "Late Bloomer" jumped into my head. Memories of those high school days came flooding back far more easily than I expected. Of course, I was one of those weirdos who actually liked school. I got good grades and participated in many extra-curricular activities. I actually stayed one semester more than I had to because I was having so much fun (and I wanted to graduate with my class).

Yep, that weird.

But that doesn't mean I didn't experience some of the same high school horrors that many of us did--the unrequited love for that guy sitting behind me in choir, the terminal shyness that made me blush every time a boy even talked to me, the agony of not going to the dance, the fear that I wouldn't have the answer when the teacher called on me.

My heroine in "Late Bloomer" experiences some of that and more. In a school specifically for educating witches on how to use their talents, she has no magickal ability. Sort of like being the only one in class with a horn growing out of your head. Naturally, she's picked on. She doesn't fit in and doesn't think she ever will. But she perseveres and makes friends and learns that sometimes the best way to fit in is to be yourself.Gee, wish I 'd known that decades ago.

What stories do you have to tell from high school? Your favorite moment? Your worst? Comment here until the end of October. We'll pick the one we like best and award a copy of Witch High, autographed by myself, Deb Dixon and Pam McCutcheon, to the winner.

Karen Fox. Visit her website.

Witchy Words of...er...Wisdom from Pamela Luzier

Menopause sucks. They tell you about the hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings, but they never tell you about the truly horrible part of menopause: noun loss. Ever since I started through "the change," I've been losing my nouns. I'll be talking away, using verbs, articles, adjectives and adverbs with ease, then I'll come upon a noun and be totally stumped. Especially proper nouns. Names? Ha! Forget it. And what's that small black thing in my front yard the postman stuffs with bills and magazines?
Not a clue. I know exactly what it is, but can't for the life of me figure out what it's called.

When I told my doctor about the problem, she laughed. She said a lot of women go through menopause and realize they're having a problem with their memory, but only a writer would identify the part of speech we lose. She promises me it's not dementia, not a sign of incipient Alzheimer's. No, it's simply menopause. My friends laughed, too, until it began happening to them as well. Who knew hormones could mess up your brain so much?

Wait. Hormones screwing with my brain? Oh, yeah. I've been there before...I forgot about puberty. Well, I didn't actually forget. I remember it very clearly (no nouns involved, you see). So, when Denise Little asked me to write a fantasy short story for the Witch High anthology, about a special high school that catered to witches, I said yes. Who doesn't remember high school and the whole gamut of emotions that go along with that?

In my story, "Chemistry 101," fire witch Kenina Bailey is gearing up her courage to ask her chemistry lab partner to the Sadie Hawkins dance—he's a total hottie, even for a water witch. But when a blaze breaks out in the lab, the water witches accuse her and call for her expulsion. How can she clear her name and find a date for the dance?

Luckily, my noun loss problem isn't visible to my readers. If I have a problem remembering one, I can always come back later to fill it in and no one is the wiser. But make me feel better, will ya? Tell me it happens to you, too. If it doesn't, I'm not sure I want to know.

While I'm waiting for your comments, I'll take a break and see if I have anything to drink in the...uh, oh crap, you know--that big white thing in the kitchen that keeps food cold....

Pamela Luzier -- Visit Pam's website

Debra Dixon: Learning how to say "Nookay..."

It will suprise none of my friends that I'm up at midnight or that I have to be at the airport tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.. Neither will it surprise them that I have at least two more hours of work to do before I can go to sleep. (That would be two more hours AFTER writing this blog, which will be the last fun thing I do until my head finds the pillow.)

Sleeping is something I do very well, but not nearly often enough lately. (Who are we kidding? I haven't slept since 1993.) I thought I was supposed to stop burning the candle at both ends once I became a "grown up." I'm supposed to know better. Well, maybe the problem is that I'm supposed to "no" better. I suck at "No."In fact my sucking at the word "no" is responsible for my writing "Coyote Run", a Young Adult story for the anthology WITCH HIGH.

Picture the scene: a writer's conference, a room full of editors, a need to make chit-chat. I say, "Hey, someone told me about the anthology you're doing. WITCH HIGH sounds fabulous."

The editor says, "I have room. Would you like to write something for me?"

I say, "Nookay."

Doh! It's the extra letters in "no" that get me every time! In this case though I was thrilled to have over committed myself. In research the YA market, I found fabulous books and authors. Any reader will tell you that finding a whole herd of new authors is akin to hitting the lottery. I literally had to force myself to stop reading and write my darned story, "Coyote Run."

On the day we meet my young water witch she’s just finding out she is officially the last of her class without a familiar. Worse, if your familiar hasn’t bonded with you by the time you’re seventeen, it’s not going to happen. In two weeks she’ll be turning seventeen.

And so her misery and the schemes to find a familiar begin. Little does she know she’s about to have a much bigger familiar problem that will make NOT having a familiar seem like a piece of cake. Toss in a mysterious young man from Ireland, the emotional scars she carries from her mother’s suicide when she was younger, a new stepmother, one of the darkest familiars of the craft, and you have "Coyote Run."

I hope you enjoy! And maybe even discover some fabulous new authors.

Visit Debra's website or blog with her at Riding with the Top Down.