Wendy is a seeker and mystic with a background in Indigenous Studies and English literature. She loves to soak up the landscape so, although she’s an introvert, in each book her characters go on a journey where she’s travelled herself. She found her voice publishing poetry and Native Rights articles in Canadian news magazines and now is an Indie author/ publisher at Blue Haven Press. http://bluehavenpress. com
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bluehavenpress.com Uncaged welcomes W.L. Hawkin Welcome to Uncaged! You’ve written four urban fantasy books in the Hollystone Mystery Series with the latest being To Kill a King. Can you tell readers more about the series? Can these books be read as standalones? Sure. The series revolves around a coven of witches based in Vancouver who solve murders. I didn’t know I was writing a series when I started. I was just writing to escape my workaday world teaching high school and urban fantasy is a fun, freeing genre. In To Charm a Killer, a serial killer is abducting witches and the coven spins a charm to catch him before he can do anymore harm. But spells create ripples. A teenage girl gets caught up in the charm and everyone starts misbehaving. Estrada, who is a freespirited polyamorous magician and also high priest of the coven, emerges as the lead protagonist and travels to Ireland to save the girl. In To Sleep with Stones, Dylan McBride, another coven
member is arrested for murder while working on an archaeological dig in Scotland. He calls on Estrada to find the real killer and get him out of prison. But, while Estrada’s in Scotland helping Dylan, his lover, Michael Stryker, gets targeted by a vampire and makes a mistake that propels us into book three, To Render a Raven. When the vampire steals Estrada’s baby on the eve of her first birthday, the coven travel up the BC coast by yacht to rescue her. To Kill a King spins off To Sleep with Stones. Sorcha O’Hallorhan, who headed the archaeological dig in Scotland is given a gift by a god—she can go anywhere in time to any place she desires. Well, when she was fourteen, Sorcha saw Old Croghan Man’s remains in the National Museum in Ireland. His torso had been dug from a bog in the Irish Midlands. Sorcha has the gift of psychometry and when she touches the metal on his leather armband she sees his face, falls for him, and decides to become an archaeologist. So, the god takes her to Iron Age Ireland to meet the man she once envisioned. Knowing he will be ritually murdered and thrown in the bog to cure for two thousand years, Sorcha determines to save the bog man from his fate. When Estrada discovers that Sorcha is stranded in Iron Age Ireland with Celtic Druids, he and Dylan demand that the god send them there so they can rescue her. The books can be read as standalones as each story is self-contained, but what I realized after writing book four is that the series chronicles Estrada’s personal journey. So, if you want a richer, deeper experience, it’s good to begin at the beginning. You also review books on your website, do you post the reviews on Amazon? What is your preferred reading genre? I love to read mystery, thriller, and action-adventure, which coincidentally is what I write! I do post reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I also write reviews for the Ottawa Review of Books online, a site that features Canadian authors. I try to support other authors as much as I can because I know what Issue 58 | May 2021 | 55
