You have seen the quote on t-shirts and mugs, right? Well, let me tell you my story. I am a writer of magical erotic romances. The majority of my protagonists are contemporary Wiccans or fantasy witches. I have recently gotten published and along with the contracts came some new friends.
The six of us become quick friends during the next two months living in a lake community where we take our kids swimming daily in the summer. Of these new friends, I find that four of their five marriages are at some stage in the divorce process. Now, I don’t know these women’s husbands. One husband I met in a driveway, was introduced to, shook hands with before he went back inside his home. I promise this will be vital information. I go away on vacation, and this particular husband confronts his wife about an affair she has been having with one of his good friends for almost a year. Of course, his next step is to start telling other husbands in the neighborhood that I am a witch. Actually, I am a high priestess! And, I have lured these women into a coven. I have single-handily destroyed their marriages. No, this is not the plot of a novel, yet! And, of course, the math just doesn’t add up. Plus, I have an amazingly happy marriage and have naively asked if any of theirs could be saved. What does add up is that I am new to the group, he doesn’t know my husband like he does the others, and my website gives him the ‘proof’ he needs. Therefore, I am an easy scapegoat.
Okay, now once I calm my husband down about this whole thing and talk these women out of renting witch’s costumes and parading through the streets at night, I find out that this man claims to have looked into my eyes and seen true evil. Funny, being kind-of a shy person, I probably didn’t quite catch his eyes when I shook his hand during the driveway incident I mentioned earlier. Now, luckily anyone who knows this reclusive, quiet writer is laughing at these accusations. Yet, as I sit here just weeks from the release of Celtic Love Knots, Volume 10 with two stories having witch’s as protagonist’s, I have to chuckle evilly to myself. With a bookshelf of Wiccan books as well as a plethora of websites for black magic I have read for research, this man should be thanking his lucky stars that he is not right about me. Interestingly enough, last week I came across a spell to give a man boils. Nonetheless, I respect it all too much to dabble.
I plan on getting even in my own way. I am developing a storyline for a new novel that I will call, “Modern Day Witch Hunt.†If it gets published, would it be tacky to dedicate it to this man? The moral of the story of course, is if you get published stay a recluse! No seriously, what I have learned is you can’t have an imagination in a neighborhood of failing marriages. Huh? I am not quite sure what there is to learn from this. I can only use it for good, and let this man know that I will be including him in my next novel since he has blurred the lines between fantasy and reality already.
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I had to laugh when I saw your leader, because I’m wearing that T-shirt. While I’m not much into Wiccan, I do have a daughter who is. But I agree, writers consider everything as writing fodder.
Good luck with your next book!
I always tell people that they better not piss me off or they will die a horrible death in one of my books.
Isn’t it awful that we are so scared of what we don’t understand.
cmr
Sounds like that guy was looking for someone to blame his own problems on and you were the lucky target. I’m not much into using real people in my books though I often use first or last names that I hear. I always figure it’s safer to make everybody up from my imagination. After all, I hoping the entire world will read one of my books someday. I don’t want anyone to see himself in there.
Sorry to hear about your troubles. FYI, though (and as a published author you should know this), you don’t create plurals using an apostrophe. “Witches” not “witch’s” and ditto on “protagonist’s”.
Kiki
That would have to be one of the most creative excuses for “I screwed up my marriage” that I have ever heard. And does anyone think he is going to do any better next time, with an attitude like that? The scary thing is that we live in such a pass-the-buck culture that some people could take him seriously. And changing tack, don’t feel bad about the apostrophes. I, too, have a bad habit of typing what I hear in my head, without stopping to check if the right homonym has come out on the page!
OH LAWD! Get thee behind me, you eee-vile woman yee! Good grief.
People like that don’t have anything better to do–and me, I just love to screw with them a little too much. 
So yeah, it *IS* fun to tell someone like that, “Guess who I’m using for inspiration in my next novel/story/etc.?”
I also had a friend in high school once who was accused of looking “like a witch” and “giving the evil eye.” One of the sweetest, most accepting people I’ve ever met in my entire life…and the chick who called her a witch? Total head case. I’m more squicked out by the folks who glance at someone else and claim they’ve looked into the heart of evil.
Oh Wow
If he’d said that 150 years ago?
You wouldn’ t be here right now.
It was that knee jerk reaction that caused so many senseless deaths.
He is part of the clique of “us VS outsiders” focusing on the “new/unknown” to place blame on for what they didn’t understand or refused to take responsibility for.
That kind of thinking and talking in our society should have been left behind at the Salem Witch Trials.
He is one scary dude.
Definitely, off him in one of your books.
Or totally make him see the light and have him begging for your mercy.
Sheesh!
I told my dentist—after he poked me before I was numb that if he didn’t lighten up I’d write a story about a small town dentist who disappears mysteriously…he laughed knowing that I was only teasing…however, his assistant looked freaked out.
Good luck with your book!
Write him in to that novel, and embellish to your heart’s content! Anyone who could blame the failure of their marriage on fiction about wicca deserves to be publicly exposed (literally? That would be a fun scene to write)….