The problem With Witches...With James Nicol

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm the director of the Centre and also an author. And today I'm joined by a good friend at the Centre James Nickel who also teaches on our creative writing courses. But today we thought we would discuss the subject of witches in fantasy. And James first of all why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your books? Absolutely I felt like I should cackle when you said witches. I'll resist the urge. Yes my name is James Nickel. I am an author for children. I write sort of specifically for the middle grade audience which is kind of depending whether you're in a bookshop or a library or which of those you're in. Where in the country you are it's about sort of seven to 12-year-olds or anywhere within that age range. And my first series of books the Apprentice which were published in 2016 2018 and 2019 and feature a young witch who has just kind of stopped learning to be a witch and she's off out to do the job of a witch. And she kind of messes things up quite royally at the beginning of the first book but is mysteriously still given a placement as a witch because in the world that my books are set in being witches like being a public servant and I'm sure we'll come on to more about that later on. So she sent to this very remote back water town in the middle of nowhere to be their local witch and they've kind of they've slightly messed up because they've forgotten that Lull which is the town where she sent to is on the edge of this gigantic magical forest which has its own problems and it just kind of things just get worse and worse from there really. And obviously over the over the series of the books we see her sort of developed from this very unsure young witch into somebody who's very competent with their own power and their own and their own self as well. And yeah that's kind of and other than that other than being an author I've also been a book seller for many years and I now also work part-time in one of our local libraries up here in Yorkshire which is where I live and write these days. Excellent. So James before we go back to talking about your series and the witch and how witch is appearing in that let's do a little bit of brainstorming about. There would be a hint with a character type. So I was the first thing I was thinking of who is my favourite fairy tale which I'm supposed to those in novel. So have you got a favourite fairy tale witch? I've got a couple of favourite fairy tale witches actually. I think I'm really kind of fascinated by the witch in Rapunzel and I think partly that's because that's a story I remember from a very young age being read to me and I grew up in the era of the Ladybird favourite tales that had those very super realistic illustrations in them. So I'm mildly traumatised by them I think and I remember because I found some of the images for when I was getting ready to talk about the apprentice witch and obviously fairy tale which is a big influence and I was shocked by how much these witches in these fairy tales look like nuns. They kind of they've got these black kind of sort of herded robes on and yeah just quite scary. So thankfully I was never really brought up around them because I think I would have been absolutely terrified of them but beyond that I think it's just she you know she's often called Mother Gothel isn't she or some a variation on that and she just seems like a very focused and determined kind of which rather than just often in the fairy tales they're almost like her you know they kind of just pop up and do something and then they disappear again whereas she is very determined you know she's got her her own kind of goal set you know and that's that's something we're always saying when we're talking about creating characters in books when we're teaching on the course about the whole you know making sure your antagonist has a goal and and her as focused as your main character I think you know with Rapunzel the witch in that just seems as though she definitely does have her own story going on rather than the fact that she is just a character in somebody else's tale and I think that's always that's always an interesting point to be in and aside from that she's just really horrible isn't she I mean she's pushing people out of windows you know she's looking people in towers forever and ever and ever and just real nasty piece of work I think but there is just enough of her own story in it to make her interesting though isn't it because it starts with a sin against her yes you know she has the garden where she's presumably done the hard work or paid someone to I don't know I don't know to grow the Rapunzel flower or whatever the lady who's Rapunzel's mother who wants to you know with her cravings in pregnancy wants to you know it's all very very interesting feminist feminist feminine themes going on here about the you know the kind of things you might feel during pregnancy and then of course it the witch herself seems to be childless there's the element of you can see why she might want the child which the neighbour next door has got you know it's it's it's it's it's dark stuff but you can sort of understand where she's coming from which does make her more interesting actually she was the one I was thinking of so I'm going to go from my favorite one of course is the sort of backup who gets a lot of airtime which is the the witch in seeping beauty oh yes I mean she's become a bit of a millificent you know she's become a sort of character in her own right thanks to she was kind of the other one I thought of actually but then I was thinking oh she's technically a wicked fairy isn't she she's not actually a witch but then I remember and you probably know this more than me because you're you're much more academic than I but I seem to remember somebody telling me that if you go back far enough and look at all the origins of the fairy tales often the wicked witches in the fairy tales were wicked fairies and it was only as you know through history when we you know the general public thought that witches were real that some of those stories obviously started to reflect more what we were experiencing in the real world and and those wicked fairies became wicked witches and I was always fascinated by that because I was like oh you know when you think about it there are lots of witches and not that many fairies in fairy tales so they should probably be called witchy tales not fairy tales at all true and then we'll pop out of folk tales aren't they with all these these characters I think the thing about the if we're allowing her I think so oh yeah okay the sleeping no the snow white one is the it's a jealousy theme in it which is very interesting to look at because of course they all all of these characters are us it's not as if they are out they represent different parts of our nature yeah have these dark drives somewhere inside us so we and she's and she's that one isn't she there's the fear of growing old and undesirable and it all turns in on herself and they take it takes it far too far but actually I did mention they've just by mistake sleeping beauty because again that's that goes to your point about the fairies because at the baptism she's the one who isn't invited yes and she's clearly the same as the fairies she's the bad one and you can that also plays that thing about you've been left out yeah so she's really miffed so wasn't invited to the party so again she's a fairy tale character who can do her own you know have her own side in the story okay so that's the ones in fairy tales which obviously are very much painted in primary colors that's how it works but about a bit more subtle are going to your favorite novel which you need to be in adult fiction as well as yeah see this is the difficult this was the I've got like a list now okay so I was my my my gut instinct was the grand high witch from the witches by rolled owl because I just again there's just that very delicious wickedness of the grand high which she's there's no kind of you know it's not gray is it she's completely black-hearted you couldn't be confused with thinking that oh she's gonna redeem herself in the end you you just know that's never gonna happen and I think she's just such a very vivid character you know Quentin Blake's brilliant illustrations aside I think you can conjure up a picture of what you imagine she looks like just from from rolled owl's words but also I remember as a bookseller I used to often be invited into schools to to do readings and things and and I would do anything possible I could to make sure that I got to read the grand high which is kind of speech when she's telling them all what she's going to do with the children because it's just wonderful it's just brilliant and delicious and so she was certainly top of my list and then I was thinking about which is like Mildred Hubble because I think you know without Jill Murphy's brilliant the worst which Ariam and the apprentice which wouldn't have existed at all and Mildred feels very much like how we all kind of feel doesn't she as children and probably as adults quite a lot of the time as well that you just can't do anything right and then I was thinking about the white witch in Narnia because she again is just you know just I can't believe and maybe somebody has and I just I'm not aware of it that nobody's ever kind of written a whole book just about the white witch and and kind of her she's ready for an origin story I think isn't she she's ready for a ready for her kind of story to be told in a way just wonderful she does get an origin story of a sort it's only like half of it though if you remember in the magician's nephew I don't I see I have read them all but it's the one I remember the least and I don't know why I skipped yeah the children go through these wonderful pools between the worlds and they first the first place they go is a sort of world at the end of its life called Charm and I think it's one of them rings the bell oh which one is it might be Polly anyway somebody rings the bell and wakes up the this Queen Jadis as she has been known and she latches onto them literally sort of takes hold of their lug hole and travels with them as they escape this place and goes first to the sort of Edwardian London where she then wreaks havoc like taking treating everyone as surfs it's great it's really good actually I have a enjoy again I remember this very vivid illustration of her like a stride a horse and carriage yes like Bodicea but in yeah and they have to get get her out of there so they take her back into the ship the place between the worlds and end up in Narnia so the children bring her into Narnia yeah bringing that element of evil and sort of queenly you know arrogance into the genesis moment of Narnia but going to your point we don't have the charm story no you just know that she's been this terrible ruler of this planet that sounds a bit like some kind of game of thrones society so yeah someone should do that yeah how does she get to be so mean I know and then and then that got me on to thinking about Elphaba in Wicked which is one of my favorite books and you know I really enjoyed the musical though it's very very different kettle of fish as they often are but and I think that's you know that's that's something that's been done really beautifully isn't it looking at the wicked witch and and completely flipping it around on its axis really and saying you know it's just somebody's point of view that she was wicked and actually when you look at the the story in wicked that's you understand completely and you're kind of there gunning for her and hoping that she succeeds in what she's trying to do and you feel quite sad when Dorothy throws that bucket of water over yeah yeah that's right I think I'm with you on the definitely on the Narnia because that's the witch I think of you know when someone says but then I have to also say oh okay so there's a lot of witches and Harry Potter too but they don't feel very much like witches they feel more like student student magicians yeah it's just that the terminology says they witches but if we're allowing the Harry Potter world my favorite witch amongst all of them is Dolores Umbridge which is so awful in a different kind of way whereas Bellatrix the strange is like witchy witch yes Dolores Umbridge is your process orientated political witch which I think is quite a nice variation on a theme but all of these take us back to your own writing about witches because we've obviously got this you've got some stereotypes out there which have become quite problematic in some ways about the demonization of women's power and all that kind of thing so when you are writing about witches what are your sort of choices that you're making and how you're defining what your witches are I think there was there was there's so much isn't there when you start to look at witches in in fairy stories and novels and films and everything you there is just so so much that kind of comes flying at you pun intended and and it is about kind of picking and choosing quite carefully and and I was very aware that you know I was writing a book about a witch that flies on the broomstick and and a little bit in the back of my head I kept having sort of fear of Harry Potter comparison um but to a selic sent you I sort of had to just set that aside because I think if if I'd worried about it too much I would have never have written the books and also a bit you know I I wrote the apprentice which really is a as a practice to see if I could finish a whole novel I started another fantasy book for children and I I'd got so far with it and then it would just I would get stuck so often I um creative writing course I left into the apprentice witch and and I kind of I liked making those decisions and thinking okay so how is she going to what is the magic going to be like in this world how are they going to control the magic and and I kind of discounted ones very quickly because I think they are so cemented in the world of Harry Potter these days that it just it didn't seem like the right thing and I quite like the idea for a while that she would have a a cauldron like a small cauldron and that she would have to brew her magic in this cauldron but then I was thinking well practically speaking my practical brain kicking in by the time she's got this potion bubbling and boiling away whatever she's trying to protect herself or other people against is probably going to be chewing both of her legs off isn't it so the the cauldron thing whilst I thought it was a lovely idea just didn't seem practical enough and then I was thinking about symbols and and obviously symbology and witchcraft are very closely linked but and I think that is the point where it becomes you know where people might think oh well how are you going to overcome that and I remember when I was when I eventually worked out the glyphs that are what they use in the in the stories these magical symbols I had this gorgeous notebook it's not anywhere to hand to show you but it's just a small little leather bound notebook that somebody gave me as a gift and it was one of those things it was it was too small to use in sort of any real practical way but it was too nice just to use for kind of like making shopping lists or notes in a meeting and so it just sat on my book case rather anyway in the end I do did all of these glyphs in this book which then kind of became the inspiration for the second book but when I had a meeting with with by accounting on my publisher fairly early on and I showed him this book that had the glyphs in it he flicked through it all really really quickly and when he got through he closed it and he sort of sied with relief and I said what's the matter and he said I was just checking the world and he pentagrams in there I think he was quite worried so I kind of used that idea of the symbols but completely went in the opposite direction I was looking for inspiration at kind of you know Chinese and Japanese characters other kind of made up languages like Elvish or Vulcan all sorts of things and in the end I made up my own because I just couldn't find what I was looking for and it was very quickly a a mixture of musical notes and numbers my little person has woken up so we just had a little break because James's baby woke up so if anyone who's an stranger is it's a baby happily being cuddled yeah it's not my stomach so we were talking about the witches in your world and what they do I'm interested in this idea that they're like a kind of civil service or a sort of local representative what is their job what is what they mean before so magic is something that everybody has to deal with in that world it's it's kind of almost the flip opposite of Harry Potter where it all happens in secret and in hidden places magic happens out in the open and everybody has to deal with it regardless of whether they have the ability to actually do something or or whether they're just you know a non-magical person and so the witches can control the magic and they are then given positions of responsibility within communities to help people so it could be a magical infestation that you have in your house which is one of the problems that Ariane went encounters fairly early on in the book or it could be as simple as making a magical charm for somebody for whatever they need it for so when she first arrives in Lull and there has issued everybody with a within an out of date for a start magical charm but he doesn't know anything about magic and he's actually given given them the charms that a farmer would use to protect himself from a marauding pair of cows oh getting you need to go back to sleep yeah so it's kind of those are the sort of the two examples of the types of magic that the witches get involved with somebody once described it as a cross between call the midwife and the worst witch and my agent says it's more like all creatures great and small cross with the worst because of the there's an awful lot of magical creatures the feature in the story as well so yeah it's kind of it's a it's a mishmash but they are there as a you know in the way that you would go and see a GP or a dentist or you know a bit like the local librarian or the vicar or a teacher they're kind of you know people within the community that others turn to and expect a lot from and look up to hopefully as well um yeah that was kind of the the sort of the the thing I wanted to do that would be would be different because often with with magical stories you find that the main character quite early on is discovers that they have a magical power and then it's about them learning to use it and I thought well there's lots of brilliant books that already do that and I wasn't interested in trying to retread that ground I wanted to know what happened after they learned how to use their magical ability so I knew that it was going to be about somebody doing the work of a witch that as you quite rightly asked what is the job of witch and it took me water to work that one out myself but that was part of the fun as well was discovering that for myself and I think this goes back to where we were talking about the one of the problems about writing about which is is the fact that they've been this um anti female stock figure on the edges of society and you know the sort of either the thought was that very often it was the old woman who grew herbs and made a little bit of a living as a sort of natural healer who then got picked on us a witch because they could and then you get things like the sale and witch trials and all where it's used to settle scores so one way of handling all of that is I is what you've done is to put the witches as part of society yeah part of the community your local vet um yeah no I can see that that really helps draw the sting that is in the the idea of a witch and I grew up in Norfolk which you know like lots of East Anglia is kind of rife with stories and legends of witches and I can remember one particularly um kings in where I where I lived there's a building in the market square and above the central window there's a black diamond and then the black diamond there's a black heart and it's called the witch's heart and there's a legend about this woman who was burnt well she was actually boiled in oil in the market square she was called Margaret Reed and um as she was bubbling away in this cauldron her heart allegedly burst out of her chest flew across the marketplace and hit this building which was the house where the people who'd accused her of being a witch lived um and I don't know who told me that story it's one of those things that I seem to have known my whole life and if you ask anybody from kings in the story the witch's heart they'll tell you something similar if not identical to that story the witch's name might be slightly different um the method of her dispatch might be slightly different but it always ends up with that heart flying across the marketplace which is you know it's a very visual thing to have implanted in your brain at a very I'm assuming young age um but I knew like you were saying that there's a lot of the what we do know about those people who were accused of witchcraft historically were they were healers and midwives and and that you know they were they were trying to help people so it was you know without wanting to kind of think that I was going back I'm writing old wrongs that wasn't at all but it was kind of what would have happened if if the reverse had been the truth then they had been celebrated and and encouraged rather than picked on and persecuted I think Terry Pratchett has a good line on this which I'm going to slightly misquote but it's something like you know the the wizards get to do the sort of you know serious high magic and witches get to give you walks a lot about the sort of glass ceiling in magic um which I think is what has been done to try and rectify that but you still get it coming in don't you um yeah I was thinking thinking about the witcher series obviously a different kind of witcher isn't a witch but the witches in the witcher they the very first run of them Jennifer Jennifer she's this sort of ugly old ugly girl who gets this beautifying spell and that I found that at where is me where that story starts she turns into a really good character and an interesting character but this point of her magic makes you beautiful and desirable sexualized object I found quite worrying and problematic anyway we're not in that world going on in in terms of the archetypes of what witchcraft is about yeah and I did I think when I was when I was thinking about my story when I started to write the apprentice which and I was thinking well I wanted to be a story that has magic in it and who's the best person to control magic and I thought well a witch just seemed like the natural person to pick without overthinking it too much at that point I'm sure there was lots of overthinking later on um but it seemed to me that you know as somebody who's always read a lot of children's books and and kind of existed in that world that even then and this would have been 2012 so we're talking you know a while ago now 10 years in fact um that there was still even in in the books then the witches were the warty old lady who curses people or was somebody sidekick there weren't there weren't that many witch witches who were heroes in their own stories and even poor old Hermione is only the sidekick she's not the main character in the Harry Potter books although she's a main character um she was still only you know there to do all the brainy stuff for him yeah that's another discussion really about you as a booksellerist whether or not Harry Potter the Hermione Granger series I was always told as a writer that boys tend not to read books with girls that is interesting because I would say from my experience at doing events and selling books you know of my own books when I'm doing school visits and things I'd say it's soft and 50-50 that I sell books to as many boys as I do to girls um and I think part of that's largely down to the lovely covers that are on the books in that they're silhouettes and they're not overly not pink and not pink one of them was very nearly pink and I it was one of those kind of you know disappointed Christmas present faces when you sort of like oh it's lovely um and inside you die a little bit but thankfully it got changed to yellow before it was published so that was a big relief um yes but I think that's that's part of the the the thing that's made it not accessible but not it hasn't put boy readers off and perhaps the fact that I'm not a girl um might have helped as well I don't know but I get lots of lovely messages from parents you know they're like oh my sons you know my son met you at school or my son's picked your book up um and that's always really that's really nice because I didn't expect it you know I wrote a book with a female a largely female cast the boys one of my one of my best reviews ever was from a young reader young girl and um she gave me nine golden balls out of ten for my for the book and I would have got ten golden balls if there hadn't been any boys in it because boys are stupid apparently right um and so yeah and they're in largely in the apprentice which the boy characters except for Colin they are rather stupid okay so we've we've sort of been talking a bit about the the problem about witchcraft when it comes to the sort of the way it's been used against women uh over the centuries but there we haven't re-talked about the association with evil because why you know where witchcraft in the sort of Halloween sense comes from is that it's to do with the whole idea of black magic evil in some story world it's to do with sort of the devil and that sort of thing too and you know there's the witch in the bible which are end or and things like that um what do you do with evil in your world how do you deal with that side I'm thinking here that you know there was um you know the well publicized cases of people not reading Harry Potter uh I don't know how true this is but trying to ban it from libraries in america because it dealt with witchcraft which were seen anti-Christian um anyway all that stuff what if you're done with evil I put it in a nice little box and hidden it um no I haven't because I think you know well Percy speaking and experienced from people that you know I know thankfully very few of us ever really experienced true evil in our lives on a personal you know to deal with and so I didn't feel that there needed to be I mean there are wicked characters in the story obviously and there are bad things that happen but I think on the scale of that we all have bad things that happen to us and we all meet characters that we don't much like in life and that aren't very pleasant but those characters aren't actually truly evil so most of their bad characters in the story aren't pure evil and also I think pure evil it kind of it feels a bit twirly moustache and tying you to the train tracks doesn't it doesn't feel yeah doesn't feel um real in a way that I wanted the you know the characters to deal with real real in a fantasy world kind of experiences so I've made the the things that Ariane and her friends have to deal with to be the sorts of things that we all have to deal with like you know overbearing um older people or bullies or um you know overcoming their own doubts and worries and fears so it's I haven't tried to kind of pretend evil doesn't exist but I kind of tried to to make it feel more realistic in an odd way because it's a fantasy book so it's never going to be realistic um but not not just to be oh they did it because they were evil um because that just feels like a bit of a cop out in a way um but as I said I mean there are some pretty wicked people in the books later on um the people that are kind of pulling all the strings but not yeah there's you know the reasons behind it and it's not just oh because they're because they're evil um so yeah does that answer the question yeah I think what it's describing is the fact that one of the things you learn when you write fantasy is there various forms of worlds so the problem about that Harry Potter must be banned because it's got witches in thing is that within the laws of the Harry Potter universe there isn't a religious level in it there isn't a sort of demon side there is good and evil but it doesn't have a supernatural supernatural ghost and things but it's all within a sort of bubble which is the fight for in good and evil and a redefinition of witches and wizards within that world so in your world you've got a a sense of good and bad which is recognizable you're not tapping into some sort of narrative of raising demons and no i mean the devil which is a a folkloric version of this but it's not in your world so when you say which you aren't saying that one of which but some people don't listen to this or not so you get to sort of need your reaction which i hope you don't get but um no i mean very i've been surprised i was invited to a Catholic prep school on um ash wednesday to do a whole day of creative writing sessions and talk about the apprentice which and i was thinking do they know it's got a witch in the book i mean i know it's not that sort of witch but um it was there was no problem but i did i somebody did tell me once that they had brought copies for their local i think it was either their local school or a school where a family member taught or a child went to and they refused to have it because of it having witch in the title and i was flabbergasted to find out it was a church of england school those are you listening but i was seeing church of england is very mild it's not a sort of um exact must be just a local issue i think so and i just and in the way i was kind of excited that i kind of you know i'd sort of been banned a little bit i kind of i was like yes we could probably get a bit more social media play from that but then it takes you into you know it waters all of that doesn't it i mean it's not too the thing is it's just it's not that anybody's downplaying the nature of evil it's no in my world how i'm using this it doesn't doesn't hit those points that you're making so what you're accusing me of doing with it's not it's just i'm not there in at your particular version of a witch and that's the difficult conversation to have um anyway so thank you that's that's all that's really interesting so so we always finish our podcast by thinking of where in all the fantasy world is the best place to be something and of course i want to ask you now where in all the fantasy worlds that you've read about where would you think of the best place to be a witch well again i was kind of torn between a few places so i mean i did i was kind of strongly drawn towards the world of Harry Potter because obviously that's a very you know it's sort of very mostly welcoming and all-encompassing place to be a witch but it's also still a place where they live in in secret um and again i thought again of of the world of the worst witch but do we all really want to be stuck at school for the rest of our lives probably not um depending on your experience of school you might be quite happy so like when people say oh i'd love to go back and be a teenager again and go back to high school and i can't think of anything worse um but then i was drawn to um Alice Hoffman's practical magic series um which is it's the real world but the witches kind of lived through all of the thermal of being which is you know from they've had kind of a brush with the Salem witch trials and they've they've you know they've they've existed and survived through those through those periods and and in a wonderful kind of way that this family has just embraced their abilities as witches and and i kind of like that that kind of feeling yes i i've had this um the same Harry Potter thought as you the thing that actually i often think about that is have you noticed how magic never runs out it's that it's yeah it's resource they can just keep on doing spells as long as you know the spell and do it right you know when guardian leviosa or whatever it is yeah leviosa if you long as you get that right um you just you can just keep on doing magic which i i feel so if i was inventing a magic world i might have a budget so it doesn't feel as though you can keep on doing it so from that point of view you could just carry on doing magic all the time and so it sounds quite and you've got all the it's quite cozy when you're not being attacked by Lord Voldemort you know yes um it's got books and friends and pets and food and you know steam trains so yeah i think i'd go for that world um i'd be some obscure witch though i wouldn't want to be one of the one the right over time that doesn't sound very much fun you know i'm not greater on camping so i would you know the thing yeah but their camping always looked really lovely didn't it was like i would i would go camping if my tent had like a separate bathroom and kitchen living room in it yeah actually now i think about it wasn't the weasley tent a little bit down markets so probably you could you know spend and get uh you know it was yeah it was a i think it still looked nicer than the house that they lived in yeah anyway the inconsistencies there we go you know i put up a marquee for the wedding when you could just put off a tent and magic locked the room but anyway that's the worry about that um so thank you very much James you're very welcome it's your series now complete or is there more books to come we always say it's complete for now just because i think you know they're when you've written three books and and written the characters in the world you can always think of more things that you might like to do with them or do to them um and yeah so i'm not i'm not saying no i'm not saying yes either really i don't suppose um obviously they're they're in very early stages of development for TV at the moment so that's that's going to bring a different life to them um and if that you know if that means that it brings new readers which hopefully it will that's exciting and that might mean that people want to read more um but that's not what i'm working on at the moment the next book that's coming is this thing still magic still middle grade but different not a printer switch and i hope they'll still appeal to fans and i hope soon i can tell everybody what is cool because i feel like i've been waiting forever yes what she's been and if you if you're listening and you want to join James and me and the other tutors on one of our fancy writing courses the next one sets off in April so do sign up uh it's already filling up so it'd be good to uh if you wanted to grab a place that you grab it now thank you very much James and well done to baby uh actually managing to quiet and down and have a little listen she's gone back to sleep excellent she's got all these stories waiting for her when she's coming back thank you very much James thank you for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy visit oxfordcenterforfantasy.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide