Welcome, friend! Today I bring you a collaborative post with author Sara Raztresen and we are chatting about her latest fantasy novel, The Glass Witch.

---

Get to know the author: Sara Raztresen

Welcome Sara! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi, Kriti; thanks for having me!

I’m Sara Raztresen, a Slovene-American fantasy author and Christian witch. Fantasy’s been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember; my imagination’s been out of control ever since I learned how to put pen to paper, honestly. And of course, it’s bled into my “real” life as well, with magic and mysticism a large part of my spirituality, and with a cultural background rich in folktales and old gods hidden between Catholic shrines, lush Lord of the Rings-like landscapes, and history almost as wild as the folklore itself.

I’m sitting in a not-so-vicious cycle, to tell the truth: my reality informs my writing, and in turn, my writing helps express how I see my reality.

What inspired you to write this book?

Truth be told, I had a completely different idea for this book when the characters first popped into my head. It was one that made honestly no sense, given I thought of it as a teen, but since its total rewrite many years later, one theme has stayed consistent: the listlessness and lack of belonging of the main character, Aveline (and the way others react to and reject her).

As a Slovene-American born with one foot in two cultures, and whose mother was herself two times an immigrant (once from Slovenia to Germany, and once from Germany to America), this story now is a reflection of my and my mother’s experiences. 

There’s always a sense of belonging-but-not-quite for my mother, where she’s an American until she has a critique of the country (and then she can go back to where she came from), where she’s a German until someone hears her maiden name (and then she’s just another person from the Balkans here in Germany to do the work no one wants to do), where she’s a Slovenian until someone hears her speak a language she left too soon to learn right (because she must not really be Slovenian, if she doesn’t really know the language). In her words, it’s like being a nomad: never really belonging anywhere, even in places she feels are home.

Likewise, I was born in a split world: outside my house was American, all boasting its freedom and singing the praise of the American Dream and all that. Inside my house was Slovenian, where we baked potica for every Easter, where my oma would come from Europe to stay with us three months out of the year and spoke no English, where we knew a world outside American borders and knew mindsets outside the more, more, more mentality American consumerism encourages. With these two mindsets smashed together, I, over time, became like my mother: too American to be accepted as anything other than a cosplayer of my own culture to Europeans, and too European to be understood by my American peers as I rejected what, to me, looked much more like an American nightmare.

In The Glass Witch, Aveline is half of two opposite cultures, and she can never escape it: not in the home she loved and lost, not in the foreign land she technically has a right to call hers, too.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

There are a few things that come to mind. There’s the overall message—that such a strong conviction for one’s own country over all others honestly doesn’t help anyone in the long run; that blind nationalism is pretty cancerous—and then there’s the personal message Aveline carries: that choosing between two halves of one’s identity creates nothing but ruin. There’s no denying the influence one half has over the other, and there’s no denying that they come together to make a unique whole that should be celebrated, not shamed.

But also, I want people to understand that no matter what one’s choices are, none are made without a reason. No one makes terrible decisions for the sake of being terrible. Not often does a source of evil recognize that they are, in fact, evil.

How long did it take to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

As I mentioned before, I actually thought of the two characters, Aveline and the Winter King, a long time ago, intending it to be a fantasy romance. But I put it away to focus on other projects, and eventually I came up with a different mechanism that radically changed the nature of the story. I’d say, from the very first idea when I was about seventeen or eighteen, to the time I finally finished the very last edits, it took about six to seven years.

What makes your story unique?

In my opinion, it’s that game-changing mechanism: the way the seasons turn. I remember loving the idea of a world where each season was tied to a god-like ruler, and that these kings and queens would trade their thrones with each other and rule over each other’s kingdoms for a majority of the year, coming to know each and every one in a large international community.

I also really enjoy the Winter people themselves. They’re not people so much as constructs, like one would see or play in a Dungeons and Dragons run, because they’re made of ice and filled with magic of the god they killed. They’re the only race in the book like that, and it’s part of that tension they share with the other three seasons, who are never quite comfortable anytime they’re around, and for pretty good reason. Who would feel comfortable around walking ice dolls filled with magic and sentience?

Is The Glass Witch a standalone book or part of a series?

It’s a part of a planned trilogy. I’m currently working on the second book in the series.

What’s something you have learned on your author journey so far?

That it really is true: the first draft is bound to be a mess, no matter how good you think you are. It’s honestly something that everyone tells you, but you don’t really figure out until you sit there with a first draft of a new book and compare it with something you’ve polished to death. So many times, I found myself wondering if I just forgot how to write somehow as I looked at new drafts of different books and compared them to The Glass Witch, but here’s something that I think also serves as a bit of advice for anyone looking to write:

Save every piece of writing that you cut from your drafts.

Every single thing I cut from the drafts of The Glass Witch, I saved in folders. When I peruse those and see every bungled, messy section I cut, I remember that The Glass Witch didn’t start out perfectly, either. It took a long time to get it here, and I shouldn’t expect perfection right away from any of my other works, either—that it’s still possible to polish a real gem out of what looks like a messy chunk of rock.

If you could give a shout out to someone who has helped you in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

I couldn’t be more grateful to Jon Paperick, seriously. He is, himself, a fantastic writer of multiple books (including I Am My Beloveds), and he was the professor at Emerson that really pushed me to be my best during my MFA, as well as the editor that helped me shape and mold The Glass Witch as it was being written. Without him to help me really nail this story, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to get it written the way it is now, or been able to conceptualize the rest of the series as clearly. It was the last bit of instruction I really needed to cement the skills he taught me all throughout my two years of graduate school.

---

Book Excerpt from
The Glass Witch

Winter was the realm of silence. 

The captured Autumn messenger, Liu Bante, stumbled into the throne room with a Winter guard gripping each arm. Ahead of him was the Winter Lord, king of the Ismären, with a crown of icicles resting on his head. His face seemed made of frosted glass, and his long snowy hair drifted around him like strands of spidersilk. He wore a rich blue coat lined with silver studs, and it looked thin for Winter—but then, he was a man carved of ice. 

He stood and stared at a great deer skull with gnarled antlers that hung above his throne. Its sockets were empty, the ivory bone untouched by time save for a thin fracture down its front. Liu heard the stories of the Ismären, but he never believed them—was never inside the king’s castle—until then. 

Liu heard how they killed their god.

 How they peeled the soft velvet from her antlers and drank her blood—how they butchered Cervora, who carved these people from the ice spires of their deepest forest, and shared pieces of her among themselves. Their dying god’s flesh and silver blood granted them their icy magic, and their king the control over Winter itself. 

But that wasn’t what bothered Liu. No, those morbid tales of the Ismar god, and the cold radiating off the King, didn’t frighten the prisoner at all. What he found truly unsettling were the king’s eyes, which swiveled towards him as if they were marbles rolling in his sockets. 

As the King studied Liu, the guards gripped his arms tighter than his black ice shackles, and just as cold, too. Their armor, black and crusted with frost, seemed to absorb all light, and their spears glimmered with icy magic. 

The King’s guttural language soon broke the silence. “Release him.” 

Once the guards loosened their grip, Liu brushed off the sleeves of his red-orange coat. He buried his hands into his sleeves, but he found no relief no matter how much he rubbed his cracking skin. His pointed ears were numb despite the red fur on them, and his red curtain of hair was too thin to provide much insulation. Even if he’d shifted his body into that of a fox, as was one of the Akerijin’s talents, and covered himself with fur, he’d still freeze soon. 

“Akerijin, you cross my borders uninvited.” The King’s voice whispered like Winter winds. “How did you make it past the wall?” 

The Akerijin bowed and tried for the harsh Ismar words, devoid of the musical tones and syllables that made up his language, “Your Majesty, the fox can smell a way in no matter how high a fence or how fierce a watchdog.” Then his lips curled—and cracked. The iron tang of blood leaked into his mouth. “It’s easy to blend into fur caravans when your guards help themselves to our pelts.” 

Spears pricked his back. 

The King’s pale eyes bore into Liu, and his voice carried across the room, “Your pelts are no use to frozen bodies.” 

Liu gritted his teeth. 

“Who are you, fox?” Their word for fox, schakköl, snapped like a curse from his mouth. 

Careful of the spears, Liu stood upright and flinched again. The King stood a few paces away, but Liu never heard him move. His scalp prickled as he sucked in frozen air. 

“My name is Liu Bante; I’m a messenger for Empress Feng Souram. She brings word to Your Majesty, King Jädrich Femmel III, from the rest of the Ringlands. I humbly ask Your Majesty’s permission to deliver it.” 

The King’s stare fixed on Liu with unnatural stillness, and the corners of his mouth twitched. His voice rang off the walls, hardly seeming to come from his own mouth. “While you’re here, you may as well tell me your business. Deliver it with pride.” 

Liu’s stomach twisted. There was something about the way the Ismar’s eyes glittered that made him uneasy, his intuition begging him to flee, but he stood tall and recited his Empress’s message. She wrote it in their native tongue, every syllable soft, beautiful, alive. 

Winter must again 

Ride forward on the tail of 

Autumn’s ancient wind. 

It was a straightforward message, unlike his empress’s style, because this matter required it. Of all the Lords—Winter’s King, Summer’s Sekhran, Autumn’s Empress, and Spring’s High Priestess, rulers blessed by the gods to hold the power of the seasons in their very souls—King Jädrich was the only one to back out of his ancestors’ ancient promise: the Pact of Seasons. Without that pact, there would be no planting season, no harvest season, no quiet season—not for any country, what with no way for Lords to command seasons not their own. 

Already, it’d been one hundred years of stagnant seasons, and resources—food, especially—were running thin. The other three Lords were unable to compensate for the loss of Winter. Liu witnessed a century’s worth of Autumn—endless maple leaves, chrysanthemums, and rice harvests—but it was a thinner harvest every year. This year had been a fraction of their once magnificent bounty. 

Empress Feng Souram sent diplomat after diplomat, hoping to make use of her friendship with the Winter king and convince him to move again, but none returned. Liu was the last one his Empress would send, and he’d made it here, but he didn’t know if her message reached the king the way she’d hoped. King Jädrich only stared at him with that silver glint in his eye. 

Liu didn’t miss the stillness that overtook the king, as though he were reverting back into a lifeless ice carving. Again, the guards’ spears poked at his back, this time hard enough to pinch. Liu shifted away and turned around to face them, only to be shocked by the venom carved into their bloodless faces. 

When Liu turned back, he startled. King Jädrich towered over him. The threads of his hair drifted forward and tickled Liu’s cheeks. Those ice lips opened. 

“Listen carefully, boy.” Boy! Liu was far older than a boy, able to remember the days of Winter’s chill in his home country, but that meant nothing to this mockery of life. “I have always found pleasure in the gardens Feng Souram leaves for her guest, truly—but that time is over. We will take our Tourney no more. I’ve already told the other Lords this. I won’t tell them again.” 

Liu’s stomach twisted. “Please, Your Majesty,” he dared to say, “this is unnatural, to—” 

“I commend you.” King Jädrich spoke as if Liu never even took a breath. “Getting here, past the walls and the guards, was no simple thing. I admire the fox’s cunning even now. Your reward,” his hand rose and drifted towards Liu’s face, “is a quiet death.” 

Before Liu could move, the king touched his skin. It burned as if Liu touched frozen steel—and then there was no feeling at all. Liu’s body locked up. A pane of frost crossed over his eyes, stuck his lips shut, and he was vaguely aware that he was falling, falling— 

“Carve this into him before you send him back.” 

King Jädrich’s voice seemed so far away.

---

Interested?

Find The Glass Witch on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sara’s website. It will be released on Jan 30.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Sara on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok. Look out for my review of the book!

---

If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details. Check out other book excerpts here.

Cover image: Photo on Unsplash