AM – This week we are very happy to welcome Diana Rajchel as our Featured Author. Diana is the self-published author of The Spellcasting Picture Book: Visual Tools for Grown-up Magic and is working on another book called Divorcing a Real Witch. Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to join us today!
Glad to do it!
AM – Please tell us a little more about yourself.
I’m an American eclectic Wiccan, and I write. I’ve published material in Llewellyn annuals for the last ten years, along with contributing to a variety of other Pagan publications.
AM – How did you get started as a writer?
I was “named” a writer when a fifth grade teacher found a truly awful poem I wrote about a unicorn. I don’t know how it escaped my notebook. I officially published at age 16; the Hammond Times ran my letter to the editor encouraging adults concerned about the adult to actually show up and vote. My first paid publication came about 8 years later, with my first sale to Llewellyn, a short article on overcoming the fear of spell casting in order to just do it.
AM – Tell us more about The Spellcasting Picture Book.
The book is a tool for adults who, like me, have read all the approved manuals on witchcraft and who have perhaps dipped into a few of those witchcraft books that Wiccans in particular cast suspicion on, since so many of those adhere to a different religion and a different ethos.
To understand my take on the book, I have to explain my historical/philosophical premise. Witchcraft did not begin with Wicca. It began somewhere else, deep in human history, and witches worked magic for survival, not for polite things. Compared to those first witches (shamans, priests, other magic workers unnamed but still significant), we have a legacy of relative luxury when it comes to food and shelter – and frontal lobes that sometimes get in the way of actually succeeding at our spellwork. When I put together these drawings and the text, I produced from an altered state, and added spells I felt directed to mention. As it turned out, all the spells came from work I do. The images, sharp, bright, and super primitive, step right around the frontal lobe and get straight to the heart of the magic.
When you look at it, witchcraft of any kind is a very primitive thing, and every person with casting experience talks about embracing the subconscious. The subconscious still thinks in pictures and doesn’t care that you can’t draw like Da Vinci – it just wants to communicate, polish be damned.
AM – Why did you choose to self publish? What kind of response have you received?
I made a conscious choice to self-publish on this. First, all picture books cost a lot of money to produce. It made more financial sense to simply self-publish and allow people that wanted print copies to obtain them on demand. Second, I’ve spent almost 8 years of my life researching and assembling a very serious book about divorce among Pagans (tentatively titled Divorcing a Real Witch) and I desperately needed something that felt fun to do. Second, by producing this book, I am learning the ins and outs of self-promotion and marketing, something I will need for future books even with a traditional publisher.
As to response, the vast majority of people that have read it absolutely love it. The others who read it and don’t love it absolutely hate it. I believe that the strong reactions speak to the true merit of the book. Of those that hate it, the typical response amounts to, “How dare you?”
It’s not great art; it’s primitive. I consider that no reason to hide or apologize. I don’t think the early cave painters felt embarrassed by the awkward shapes of their buffalo. They just wanted to communicate, technique be damned.
The very point is that I dared, so even the angriest critics have reaffirmed to me that I did the right thing.
Some interesting responses I’ve had reveal something useful to know for all self-publishers: a huge number of bookstore owners have CreateSpace confused with Kindle publish. Most do not even know they can purchase books at wholesale pricing through CreateSpace, and that they can also pick up some of the books through Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
In addition, most independents believe that they can’t participate in the ebooks market. GoogleBooks has stepped in with a solution to that, the problem being that many booksellers find the Google system hard to understand and use. So the solutions are out there, but it’s up to those of us promoting our books to educate the indie booksellers, many of whom seem scared out of their minds at the direction the publishing industry as a whole has taken.
AM – Can you tell us more about your work in progress, Divorcing a Real Witch?
I’m in my roughly 2nd draft (that’s still sort of a first draft) and as of today’s rewrite session it’s around 67,000 words. I submitted a proposal to Moon Books in response to the Pagan Writer’s contest. Much to my astonishment, I was offered a contract with them last week!
AM – What inspired you to write this book?
My own divorce at age 26 certainly was a factor. As I went through this extremely trying time, I encountered many fellow young divorcees in my Pagan community. Even though we did try to help each other overcome the morass of cultural expectation versus personal truth, none of us received any support from our own religious community. This is not a failing of the community. I can only speak for my own religion of Wicca in terms of what we practice because I live surrounded by non-Wiccan Pagans that don’t like it when I generalize using the word “Pagan” to equate with “religions with practices that Wicca also uses” and I respect that. In the Wiccan faith, some traditions do have a ritual called handparting, a rite that acknowledges a divorce. That ritual can help, but it certainly doesn’t cover everything a divorcee may experience. While Pagans as a group of religious persons like to think of themselves as enlightened about things like divorce, it seems like most of us fall back on whatever lessons we learned about marriage and divorce in childhood. Combine this with a certain attitude by some (definitely not all) older Pagans that the experiences of Pagans between 20-35 just don’t count, or that divorcees only need help if they have children, and now you have a de facto, multi-layered stigma topped off with a taboo on talking about it.
This book attempts to fill a cultural hole: we have only started talking about Pagan funerals and death rites, and divorce is another form of bereavement that needs address.
AM – Are there any publishers interested in this project or are you planning on self-publishing again?
O Books has picked it up. I’m quite excited about it!
AM – What can we expect to see from you next?
I only just signed the contract for Divorcing a Real Witch last week, and I believe that this will be my next big project. I also have an outline for a book on Urban Wicca that’s been floating in the background since 2004. In between now and then, I may self-publish a fiction piece. For a few years, June 13th became “Z day” for bloggers and we all wrote various accounts of zombie attacks. I continued my story for about three years, and I know people still look for it. I plan to put together some transitional material between the posts and release it in electronic form.
AM – As an author, what do you think is the most important piece of advice that you would give an unpublished writer?
One small thing. I’m very much an advocate of Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way, and this mantra has helped me the most. Work on your project just a little bit every day. Just do one small thing. It accumulates – and the dog still gets his walk. If you can get yourself into the mindset where success/failure or rejection/acceptance no longer matter, you have given yourself exactly what you need to write.
AM – Where can we go to learn more about you and purchase your books?
You can go to my website: http://www.dianarajchel.com
You can also read my blog; I’m running a series on my personal encounters with ghosts through the middle of November: http://blog.dianarajchel.com
Also, I do have a Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/magickalrealism
If you wish to purchase the Spellcasting Picture Book, it’s on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in print:
http://www.amazon.com/Spellcasting-Picture-Book-Visual-grown-up/dp/1463599641/
You can get it for your Nook or Kindle, as well:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-spellcasting-picture-book-diana-rajchel/1104085033
http://www.amazon.com/Spellcasting-Picture-Book-Grown-up-ebook/dp/B0058PIXQA/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
AM – We appreciate you spending some time with us today Diana! We wish you continued luck with The Spellcasting Picture Book, Divorcing a Real Witch, and with your other future writing endeavors.
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