What If an Evil Witch Was Controlling Your Thoughts Without You Knowing?
Soon after being whisked away to Seattle to live with an aunt and uncle he barely knew, Charlie Creevey learned that he hailed from a family of witches. After settling into this unfamiliar life, his feelings toward his new friend Diego Ramirez began to grow into something more serious. And if that wasn’t enough, he failed to stop the nefarious witch Grace and her cohort from using the dreaded deathcraft and killing his mentor Malcolm.
In Book 3 of this riveting series, Charlie discovers that Grace has gone into hiding and is acting behind the scenes. Able to influence minds in ways that were previously unheard of in the witching world, Grace compels Charlie to unwittingly do things like taking on the bullies at Puget Academy and lying to his family. The more Charlie believes he is acting of his own accord, the more Grace secretly rebuilds her strength and plots her comeback.
Will Charlie ever be able to overcome Grace and her coven? Or is Charlie destined to live life as a gay teen witch, shrouded by the evil veil of the deathcraft? And can he ever share his secret with Diego—or will he have to keep his identity as a witch hidden in the broom closet forever? Find out in The Boy Who Chased After His Shadow.
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN
About the Series:
From paranormal adventures and a whirlwind romance, to battling evil witches and a gripping conclusion, enjoy all the thrills and excitement, in the supernatural world of the Broom Closet Stories.
How would you describe your writing style/genre?
I love the genre term “urban fantasy.” I put it in quotes here because some in the industry argue that it isn’t it a genre that stands on its own, meaning you wouldn’t find it as its own section in a bookstore. Because I’ve never toured all bookstores, I can’t argue with that line of reasoning. But I like the term because I’m a sucker for a story set in the normal world that suddenly sprouts a bit of magic: a talisman, a creature, a spell, something that takes normal reality and shifts it a few degrees to the right or left.
Pure fantasy? I enjoy reading it, but I’m not imaginative enough at world building. Additionally, it’s easier for me to picture myself in this world, waking up to learn that my neighbor is a werewolf, than it is to see myself as a peasant of Narnia, or a dragon tender in Pern. I guess I’m drawn most to what I can imagine.
Pure sci-fi? Another genre I enjoy reading, but when it comes to writing, once again, it’s based on my own character flaw: I think it takes a certain genius to craft a realistic story that includes technology which does not currently exist. While I’m not a troglodyte, I’ll never qualify for a geek card, and lack the chops to pull off decent, believable sci-fi.
But take an urban fantasy story, set in this world, and screw around with it a bit? Hidden covens, a banking society composed of vampires, an odd relative with a penchant for animal communication? I eat that stuff up.
I’m also quite picky about how the magical reveal is handled. I dislike it when the main characters only panic for a bit once they learn that magic exists, then go to the store, or balance their checkbooks, or bake bread. This drives me nuts. I would seriously lose my marbles if I found out that my neighbor was a werewolf. Even a harmless one.
I even took this to an extreme in draft one of my first novel, so that my editor Julia assumed my main character Charlie was dim-witted. We had just started working together, so she was a bit more formal with me (she has an inspiring potty mouth!), hinting at his lack of mental prowess. I was trying so hard to show that Charlie wouldn’t just accept that his mother was a witch without serious push-back, that I’d made him unbelievable on the other side of the continuum.
In short, my work is urban fiction: witchcraft plopped into the regular world, with witches keeping it a secret, and normal, cognizant folks having to accept it as a reality.
Have you ever taken a trip to research a story? Tell me about it.
My book is mostly set in Seattle, the city in which I was born and raised. I don’t live there anymore, but spent a short three years there while working on my first book, and return once or twice a year to visit family and friends. When I do, I always go on a hike through one of the many parks in the area. I find that it’s harder for me to recall all of the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest when I’m not immersed in it. The sheer number of tall trees, the ferns and moss, the lichen, all of it is so much more accessible to me when I’m in it, rather than going by recall, and helps me to create more believable settings.
I visited a good friend in Nevada City, California a few times, and found it helpful when writing about Charlie’s fictitious hometown of Clarkston, also set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. It’s beautiful, but quite different from the three cities I lived in while writing my first book: San Francisco, Seattle, and Shanghai.
What was the weirdest thing you had to Google for your story?
I had to look up when texting was invented and put into popular use, and when did GIFs come into play. When I first started writing in 2008, texting wasn’t much of a thing. Diego and Charlie always called each other, or emailed. But as I neared the end of my final draft of the first book, everyone texted by then, so I went through and inserted the technology in the story.
I’d decided that I wouldn’t set the story in a specific year, and I was able to get away with that in the first two books. But so many things in the world were changing – marriage equality, for example, hadn’t even passed in Washington State when I lived there, let alone California, not to mention the nation. That all changed in the course of writing, and I realized that by the third book I needed to set the story firmly in time so that I didn’t have to keep changing it to keep up with popular culture. I decided on 2013, and for a few months I was fine with that choice. But I woke up once last year (2020) in the middle of the night, panicking as I thought about a scene where Diego sends Charlie a GIF, which triggers a thought in Charlie’s mind that becomes a major plot point in my fifth book. I couldn’t remember if texting and GIFs were a thing in 2013, and worried that I’d have to change the year, and a bunch of other stuff. What a relief when Google cleared it up for me.
Moral of the story? Don’t stretch out a series as long as I have. Things change!
Jeff is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card to one lucky winner:
“That,” said Diego, looking about in wonder as he draped his arm over Charlie’s shoulder, “was epic. That was the most epic party I’ve ever been to.”
Amos came walking into the living room and pushed on Randall’s arm, indicating that he was ready to be petted.
“Are you glad they’re all gone, boy?” asked Charlie’s uncle. In reply, Amos’s tail thumped the floor, and the groan of pleasure that escaped his throat seemed answer enough as he leaned into Randall’s hand.
“I’m glad you liked it, Diego,” said Beverly. She held a mug of tea in her hand. The expression on her face seemed to be a mix of wistfulness and pleasure—or maybe something else. Charlie often couldn’t tell with Beverly.
“I thought that the trick-or-treaters would never end,” said Randall, shaking his head. “I worried we’d run out of candy. Just when you thought it was over—”
Amos barked once, sharp, then ran over to the north-facing wall, looking up at the small picture window high up near the ceiling, wagging his tail.
A yellow cat sat on a bare tree branch, peering down at the people in the living room as if holding court.
“Holy feline, that scared the crap out of me!” shouted Diego, clutching his chest.
Charlie snuck a glance at his aunt and raised his eyebrows. Was that a cat from the network? Or just some stray prowling around on the trees out front?
The slight shrug of her shoulders and the way she narrowed her eyes told Charlie she didn’t know.
The doorbell rang.
Amos barked again, then ran over to the front door. Randall and Diego jumped.
“I’m gonna have a heart attack!” Diego declared.
Charlie and Beverly looked first at the front door, then back at each other.
“Who the hell could that be?” asked Randall, starting to stand up. “Even the older kids should be done for the night.”
“Let me get it,” said Beverly, placing her hand on her husband’s knee before coming to her feet. Charlie knew it was a command, not a suggestion. Upon her secretive glance to him, he shrugged off Diego’s arm and followed his aunt to the foyer.
Two small figures stood on the front stoop, bathed in the yellow cone of light from the lamp above the door. They were dressed as ghosts, with pure white sheets stretched over their small bodies, ghoulish eye and mouth holes drawn in overly large ovals. Red droplets of paint, to mimic blood spatter, speckled their heads and upper bodies. As an added touch of the grotesque, twin ropes with frayed ends encircled their tiny necks.
Charlie’s skin prickled.
“Trick or treat!” cried the figure on the right, a boy’s voice. He couldn’t be older than five or six. The figure next to him, only an inch or two taller, stayed silent but held out an empty, plastic jack-o’-lantern. There was something demanding and greedy in its gesture.
“Oh,” said Beverly. “Hello. Isn’t it a little late for you to be out?” She craned her neck, and Charlie guessed she was looking for an adult standing beyond the front gate. The sidewalk appeared empty. “By yourselves?”
“No,” stomped the figure on the left. A girl. “We don’t have a curfew.”
Charlie watched as his aunt’s eyes widened before softening. “Well, I see. Charlie, do you think we have any leftover candy?”
“We won’t eat it. We just—” said the smaller boy.
The girl elbowed him so sharply that the boy teetered backwards. “Ow!” he shouted.
Charlie reached out and grabbed the bony shoulders of the ghost boy before he could topple off the porch, releasing his grip only when he was steady on his feet again.
“You’re not going to eat it?” asked Beverly.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Anyway, about that candy,” demanded the girl.
Something isn’t right about this, Charlie thought. But it was Halloween, right? You were supposed to give out candy to anyone who came by. Wasn’t that the unwritten rule?
He glanced up at the upper branches of the trees but could see no yellow cat.
“Charlie, wait here while I check to see if we have anything left,” said his aunt, turning around and walking back into the house.
Charlie, guessing that his aunt was up to something besides looking for leftover candy, did as he was told.
“Are you having a good time?” he asked the small figures.
The two ghosts stood still and remained silent, their black, oval eyes staring up at him—more chills over his skin. There was something downright frightening about these two little kids, standing side by side in their macabre costumes, saying nothing.
A strong gust of wind blew overhead, and the massive trees surrounding the house bowed and straightened, bowed and straightened. A car door slammed somewhere down the street, and he heard what sounded like a group of teenagers laughing and shouting.
“We just had a really big party,” he said. “Lots of people. Lots of kids.”
More awkward silence.
Charlie summoned a Word and cast it outward, double-checking that the extra-strong wards his aunt set to run the perimeter of their property were still intact.
His Word bounced back to him, healthy and intact. Nothing breached.
Now that he thought about it, that was silly. Charlie could tell that these two little kids were neither witches nor Echoes. Plus, if they had broken through the wards, Beverly wouldn’t have left him alone with them on the porch.
Then why were the hairs on the back of his neck static with electricity?
“Here we are!” said his aunt, stepping next to him on the porch. She held a small, clay bowl in her hand. In the bowl sat three ridiculously fat chocolate bars, wrapped in shiny black paper and tied with ornate orange ribbon. They definitely did not come from the trick-or-treaters’ stash they’d been using; he’d never seen them before.
“Only take one each, now,” said his aunt, leaning over and holding the bowl down at eye level with the children.
The Broom Closet Series emerged from a challenge/dare after Jeff Jacobson criticized other books for how they depicted witches (“Windswept hair… spells, always in Latin…” no, no, no). The friend he made these comments to called him out on his critique, noting that the authors wrote their books, not Jacobson’s. Could he write his own witchy books? In 2008, Jacobson decided to find out.
Already top sellers on Amazon, The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Straight and The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Home chart teenager Charlie Creevey’s double coming out – as a young gay man, and as a witch. He lands in the hamlet of West Seattle and becomes part of the local coven, which he needs in order to fight off Grace, a murderous villain who’s killing teens to fuel her power and control. Jacobson picks up the thread yet again in The Boy Who Chased After His Shadow as Charlie’s feelings for classmate Diego Ramirez deepen, and Grace’s pitiless murders terrify and threaten the community.
Author Website: http://www.jeffjacobsonworld.com
Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/jeff.jacobson.528
Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/theboywhocouldntflystraight
Author Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theboywhocouldntflystraight/
Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Jacobson/e/B00FI0QO02/
Thank you so much for showcasing my book on your blog!