Joie's Blog

I read about Lady Alice Kyteler in an article by Pamela Butler titled “Witchcraft & Heresy” in the Spring 2004 issue of the Ricardian Register, the Richard III Society’s quarterly publication. She was the richest woman in Kilkenny, Ireland in the 1300s. She was accused of witchcraft and vanished from history. According to legend, she fled to England.

For Margaret Izard, it’s about layering history and myth into the very bones of the story—giving the magic weight and grounding the fantasy in a world that feels real. ...Each story in the [Stones of Iona] series focuses on the search for a magic Fae stone, a Stone of Iona. Via a Fae fable, the characters learn which stone needs finding. Blending the fable into the plotline and how it unfolds became the series’ backbone.

I didn’t plot Crushing before I wrote it—as if the story was already written, and I only needed to extract it from my mind. All I knew was my protagonist (Atarah) had five days to fall in love or the world was going to end. This is a common sentiment for young adults, but I made the emotional crisis into something literal. The Crush-it dance, which we would call a Valentine's Day dance, provided a finish line to inject a race against time feeling.

Angels in the Crosswalks of Seattle: An Interview with Nikki Frank, Author of KILLING SHADOWS (The Wild Rose Press, September 18, 2024)