Tag Archives: Witches of Pendle Series

The Gisburn Witch – $0.99/£0.99 Sale

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In honour of the fact that we are now only 10 days away from the release of A Woman Named Sellers on the 1st June 2016, I am pleased to announce that the ebook version of my debut novel, The Gisburn Witch will be on sale for only $0.99/£0.99 over the next month and can be bought via the links below.

The Gisburn Witch currently holds an average rating of 4.13/5.00 on Goodreads as well as having attracted numerous positive reviews and comments.

Praise for The Gisburn Witch:

It is beautifully written and a must-read for lovers of historical fiction.
  - K.J. Farnham, Author of Don’t Call me Kit Kat

Jennet, the protagonist, is a complex, well-constructed character: her very human mix of need, desires, confusion, yearning, loving and sadness is potent and makes her a character that lingers in my mind.
  - Deborah Lincoln, Author of Agnes Canon’s War

Gisburn CoverThe Gisburn Witch
Released: 1st June 2015

A tragic tale of friendship, passion and betrayal set against the backdrop of the Pendle witch trials of 1612, one of the most famous witch trials in English history.

Scandalised as a young woman after being accused of seducing Tom Lister, a gentleman’s son, Jennet Preston’s life is filled with shame and hardship. An outcast in her own village, she befriends the Device family in Blacko, and she is quickly embroiled in their world of folk magic and superstition, of old family feuds and dangerous reputations.

When fate intervenes to reunite her with Tom, Jennet risks everything for love and happiness, but when tragedy strikes Jennet finds that she is vulnerable to accusations for which she could pay the ultimate price. The Gisburn Witch is a novel about falling in love with the wrong person, making the wrong friends, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Available at: Amazon UK / Amazon / iTunes / iTunes UK / Barnes & Noble / Smashwords / Kobo

A Woman Named Sellers Release Date

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I’m delighted to announce that my second novel, A Woman Named Sellers, will be released on 1st June 2016.

The novel will be available in both paperback and e-book format.

This book will come out a year to the day after I released my debut novel, The Gisburn Witch, and it is the second book in my Witches of Pendle series. The story takes place twenty years after the infamous Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 and follows Jennet Sellers, a woman with a dark past who finds herself caught up in the witch trials of 1634.

I’m so proud of this book and can’t wait to put it out there. Roll on 1st June!

Sellers Release Banner

A Woman Named Sellers Blurb Reveal

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It’s that post every writer loves to make; indeed, if this post was an episode of Friends, it would be called ‘The One Where She Tells Her Readers She’s Finished’. That’s right, folks, the first draft of A Woman Named Sellers is complete and is in the hands of my wonderful beta readers for review. Of course, a first draft is just that – a first draft, and there will be several months of editing cycles and finishing touches before the book is ready for release. So, I’m not quite there yet, but almost. Almost.

In the meantime, however, I am delighted to reveal the blurb for my second novel. So, without further ado, here is the back cover promotional piece for A Woman Named Sellers:

Twenty years after the first witch trials, is history about the repeat itself in Pendle?

Following the sudden death of her father, Jennet Sellers arrives in Barley to live with the Holgates, her relatives whom she barely knows. Grieving, and thrown into the turmoil of her new, cramped household, she finds solace in new friendships and in her attraction to the handsome, charismatic stonemason from Cumberland, William Braithwaite.

However, Jennet has a secret; a terrible, guilt-ridden secret which has haunted her since childhood. As Jennet finds herself falling in love with William, her life also begins to unravel, threatening to remove her thin veil of anonymity and reveal who she really is. Then, when a little boy starts telling tales about witches, suddenly Jennet finds that she is in the middle of a painfully familiar situation which puts not only her life at risk, but also threatens the lives and happiness of those she loves the most.

A Woman Named Sellers is a novel about love, forgiveness and atonement which asks, is it ever possible to escape your identity and your past?   

Hot on the heels of the blurb release will be a preview of the cover – it’s coming soon, so watch this space.

My Goals for 2016

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A few days ago I made a reflective post about my writing experiences in 2015; what I had learned, what continued to challenge me, and what I could take forward into this new year. Following on from that, I have put together a list of goals for this year. I hope these will prove to be a set of tangible, realistic aims for the year ahead. So, here goes:

  1. Keep my blog up to date – I’ve been pretty poor at keeping on top of my blog in 2015. In 2016, I aim to make one post a week, whether it is writing/project related, a book review, or something as yet undefined but interesting! This year I want to be better at recording my writing journey, and keeping people in touch with what I am doing.
  2. Publish ‘A Woman Named Sellers’ in the summer – My first novel, ‘The Gisburn Witch’, was published in June 2015. I’d like to have its sequel published before the leaves start to fall (and preferably much sooner than that). I think this is a realistic aim, even taking into account editing and rewrites.
  3. Start work on a contemporary novel – After the publication of ‘A Woman Named Sellers’, I intend to throw myself into a slightly different project for the latter half of the year. A little while ago I had the seed of an idea for a contemporary novel, a seed which in the past few weeks has grown into a lovely wee tree in the form of a slender novel outline. My first work of contemporary fiction has the working title ‘Ethersay’ and will be my main focus for the end of 2016. I’m already excited about this project, which is something completely different for me but which allows me to explore some very modern, very relevant themes in a way which historical fiction cannot, by its very nature, permit. Right, enough said on that, or I will start typing spoilers! Moving on…
  4. Start researching my next historical novel – I have to admit, I’m utterly indulging myself with this last one. By the end of 2016, I will have two novels about the Lancashire Witches under my belt. My next historical project will be a change of direction, towards another great passion of mine – the great British/American revolutionary, citizen of the world and sworn enemy of Robespierre: Thomas Paine. In the latter half of 2016 I will be completing the preliminary research for my first novel of Paine’s life, concentrating on his early years through to the American Revolution and publication of his ‘Common Sense’. Cannot wait to get inside that man’s head in the fictional sense!

Phew! Looks like it’s going to be a busy year.

Getting into the swing of things

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been working hard (and quietly – so apologies for my silence) on the sequel to The Gisburn Witch, A Girl Named Sellers. I’m pleased to say it’s going well, and I’m really enjoying the process of putting the novel together, building the characters and the themes which run through it. Before anyone gets too excited, I’m not there yet, but in terms of chapters written I’m almost in double digits and I’ve got a good momentum going.

Things are also looking positive for The Gisburn Witch, with last month’s Goodreads giveaway really boosting the book’s profile, generating a lot of interest (not to mention a few more sales!). It’s been really great to hear from people who have read and enjoyed the book, too, and to hear what they took from it, what they liked or didn’t like about particular characters, how the ending made them feel. It’s still a strange feeling at times, to discuss a story I wrote, one which lived in my head for such a long time but is now ‘out there’, so to speak.

All being well, I won’t keep those looking forward to the second book waiting for too long!!

Cracking the US Market

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Whilst sales of The Gisburn Witch in the UK have been respectable, so far getting any sales at all in the US has proved tough. It’s hard to figure out exactly why this is; I’m a writer after all, not a PR guru (I could write a separate, lengthy blog post on this – one of the many challenges of being a self-published author is that you have to be a jack of so many trades). It could be the subject matter; if a US reader wants to read novels based around witch trials, they might instinctively head for the Salem shelf rather than delving into the British alternatives. Or, it could quite simply be a result of how I have marketed the book; mainly through social media and blogging, all of which comes from a British base (as I am a UK based writer).

Whatever the reason(s), I despair no longer, for today I have sold my first copy of The Gisburn Witch in the US!! So, here’s to hopefully the first sale of many more! On which note, if you’re in the US you can get your ebook or paperback copy today on Amazon.com by following this link:

Amazon

The Gisburn Witch Paperback Giveaway

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I’m hosting a giveaway via Goodreads. One lucky entrant will win a paperback copy of my debut novel, The Gisburn Witch. You have to be in it to win it, so click on the link below…

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Gisburn Witch by Sarah L. King

The Gisburn Witch

by Sarah L. King

Giveaway ends August 09, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Creative Conundrums

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With “The Gisburn Witch” out in paperback and ebook now, I’m looking forward to a busy and productive summer of ongoing promotion for the first novel, and work on the second book, of which the working title is “A Girl Named Sellers”. Unfortunately, the journey into the second novel has so far not been such a smooth one, a fact which has frustrated and baffled me in equal measure! I recall completing “The Gisburn Witch” and thinking, with a sense of accomplishment, that the next book would surely be easier, that second time round I would know exactly what I was doing.

Think again. If anything, the second book has been tougher to tease out; contrary to all my expectations it has been unbelievably difficult to prise all those threads of ideas and plots out of my head and into something tangible and coherent when presented on paper. I started work on the second book at the beginning of 2015 and, after several false starts and numerous chapters placed in the digi-bucket, by June I was not very far forward at all and was starting to bang my head against the proverbial wall a little bit.

Last week I went on my summer holidays with my family and in between enjoying sunny days out with my kids, I took some time to reflect on what was going on with my second book, why I was finding it so hard to get stuck into it. It wasn’t a lack of inspiration, I knew that. Halfway through writing “The Gisburn Witch” I began nurturing the idea of “A Girl Named Sellers”; to me it was an instinctive choice, a clear sequel. Instead, I came to the conclusion that the problem was two-fold, and concerned both my own expectations of and approach to my own work, and questions of presentation.

So, to address the first part of the problem: my expectations and approach. My approach to the second book has been completely different to the first. When I started writing “The Gisburn Witch”, it was a bit of a pleasure project, something I wanted to do for fun. I never dreamed I would finish it, let alone publish it. I had absolutely no expectations of my own work. The experience of writing it was liberating, cathartic. With the best will in the world, I don’t have this sense of liberation with the second book. By definition it is following on from something else, it has something to live up to, thus implicitly it carries a weight of expectation, my own expectations. I have given this some thought and decided to challenge myself to be more relaxed about my work. If something works, great, if it doesn’t, I will figure it out. This was my approach with the first novel and I need to try to recapture some of that with the second.

The second problem: presentation. “A Girl Named Sellers” is quite a different story to “The Gisburn Witch”, and a major difference concerns the time period covered. “The Gisburn Witch” covered over twenty-five years, a massive time period in literary terms which presented its own challenges but which I actually found quite comfortable. The beauty of such a huge period of time is that right away, it gives you a good structure to work with, and as a historian I find nice big dated timelines comforting. By contrast, “A Girl Named Sellers” will cover less than five years, with potential for ‘flashbacks’ to the past or even a dual narrative. I have grappled with how best to present this (hence the scrapped chapters!) and I think I’ve finally come up with the way I want to do it. But it’s been a long time coming.

So, at this point I have a couple of chapters under my belt and I’m not planning to scrap them (yet!). Onwards and upwards from here!

The Gisburn Witch – now available in paperback

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The Gisburn Witch is now available in paperback! To get your copy, follow one of the links below:

Amazon UK

Amazon

I’m also pleased to say that I’ve had a couple of very favourable reviews on Amazon UK, and that the novel is currently has a five star rating. I’m really delighted by some of the comments left by readers; to know that someone has enjoyed my book makes the eighteen months of hard work worthwhile. I’ll leave you with a few of the comments from reviewers, which I particularly enjoyed:

“What struck me about this novel is that I only really felt bad for one character and it wasn’t the one I expected from the outset”

” I will certainly be doing further reading on the Pendle Witches, if this was part of the authors intentions than she certainly succeeded”

“Fab read. I was willing things to end differently. Cannot wait for the next book in the series”