Damn & Jam Tradition (and the Nazis)!
Damn & Jam Tradition (and the Nazis)!
Publishing Magik
In last week’s recounting of the latest fiction work I published, Hang Girl, I promised an update on the nonfiction work that consumed most of my writerly time in 2023—a book I’m specifically going to market to publishers instead of self-publishing.
I’ve reasons for trying that. Previously, I’ve marketed titles to traditional publishers even while I self-published them. The publishing industry is a Titanic that’s slow to turn in the face of the upheaval in writing created by self-publishing and social media outlets like Substack (uh, yeah, Substack and others have their own issues, collecting dollars from fascist, authoritarian, white-supremacist, and Nazi platforms1). Traditional presses look askance at self-published titles, immediately assuming that self-publishing authors with limited sales have “found all the market” their works can generate. They thus dismiss self-publishing writers for not having the marketing and distribution capacities available to publishing houses, instead of seeing them as a potential source of new blood.
So, I’m in a catch-22—plug away at trying to sell my writing with the tools available to my 40-hour day-job budget or knuckle under to the laborious process of marketing myself to a select few.
I’ve opted for the traditional route on this book because it’s Magik. No, literally, it’s title is Magik: A Witch on How to Enchant the World. I think it offers a message that will find an audience via the traditional publishing route, which is ironic because it represents the biggest departure from anything traditional I’ve ever done in my writing.
A Word for Witches
It’s not a chronicle of how witchery developed, the different types of witchcraft, or their origins and applications through the centuries.
But you should read it if you’re a witch.
And you should especially read it if you’re not.
It’s in part a whodunnit, told from a witch’s perspective. It’s also about what makes the cosmos and our lives tick. And about how we’re already witches without knowing it.
It’s also adamant that we don’t have to know that in order to be magikally us.
The whodunnit part has been told before, but those accounts have been burned, buried, defamed, whitewashed, and twisted out of recognition. Papa Culture fears magik. But its hints linger. Papa Culture can’t stamp them out.
I’m a witch. I write the world as I feel it, from where I stand, where I’ve been, who I am, who I’m becoming.
Three’s the Charm
Magik comes in three parts
In Part I, I tell our history from a point of view that Papa Culture has suppressed for 3,500 years.
In Part II, I bridge the chasm between where we've been and where we are now, poised to implode (uh, see Nazis^^ above).
In Part III, I’m going to show you how to enchant the world:
in the kneading of the dough,
in the poking of the bear,
in the brewing of the beer,
in the lullaby that shuts up the philosophers, and
in the magik hallowed by desire.
We’ve Never Had to Do What Papa Culture Says
All of us—female, nonbinary, male, two-spirit, genderfluid—have always desired and deserved magik. We’re in this together to enchant the world. Magik happens where I start something by the telepathy of word, out of my heart, loins, and head, and you complete it by making it your own in a way that’s unique.
There’s not one book called Magik here. There are as many unending tales as there are witches who, like you’re doing right now, read and incant it. If you can sit with me and yourself through that, then I promise you will know you are magik. That you’ve always been magik and have never really needed this book in the first place.
And I believe someone’s out there, laboring to publish titles for their press, who will see that, too.
Through the centuries, we’ve lived, died, and lived again through things that most assuredly didn’t have to be that way. But we’re here now, alive to tell the tale. If the telling doesn’t bring a smile or your saying, “This witch is crazy!” well, then, I fail at witchcraft.
I happen to think this is lively serious, as in magikal. Otherwise, it’s not worth incanting.
Happy Yule!
—Bethany
At the time of writing, I’ve asked to sign
’/The Handbasket’s letter (see below) asking Substack about it’s collecting dollars from Nazi-riffic use of the platform. ’s/The Racket’s “More on Substack’s Nazis” further outlines the situation: