Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Coming of age is a fraught time, but how much more so in the world of the fantastical. We love dark stories, and Keith Miller has just what we’re looking for, with his tale of Mira in The Witch’s Journey. Keith, can you tell us about your story?

Keith: In a town beset by demons, from which the children are disappearing, redheaded Mira grows up wild and willful. When she’s around, soups boil over and flowers catch fire, and one night in her sleep she unwittingly turns her house around. The morning of her thirteenth birthday, Mira receives a gift from the river: a gold key. It will lead her on a journey, to seek the door her key will open. The Witch’s Journey is a dark fairytale embroidered with fairytales, full of sorrows and terrors, heartbreaks and delights, chocolates and mayhem and magic.

Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?

Keith: At one point, while I was teaching English in Egypt, I had a student named Mira, and I thought, “Good name!” Several years later, on a fall afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, I was sitting on the porch working on something else when the first page arrived. I set it aside for a while, but Mira kept prodding at me, insisting her story needed to be told. 

There was a deeper inspiration, however: A historian friend had told me about the witch hunts of the early modern period in Europe and the United States, in which up to 100,000 people were killed, mostly women. Many of the women practiced pre-Christian religious rituals and healing methods. There are suggestions that the relative scarcity of red hair in Europe is a result of this genocide.

Zilla: Is there a visual image—a painting or a photo—that inspired you?

Keith: My wife had given me Essential Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley as a birthday present. I was entranced by the lushness and dense herbage. Lots of redheads!

Zilla: Do you surprise your readers?

Keith: I don’t know if I surprise my readers, but I certainly surprise myself! In order to keep my writing fresh, I don’t plot my novels in advance; I create characters and place them in propinquity. What transpires is often a bit of a shock to me.

Zilla: Why do you write?

Keith: I write to scratch an itch. My novels generally start with a character, and I want to find out what happens to them.

Zilla: If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d do instead?

Keith: I’d probably be an artist. I was an art major and still mess around with paints and chisels from time to time. My publisher, Elsewhen Press, kindly permitted me to include illustrations with The Witch’s Journey.

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Keith: You can find me at my website or my blog. You can find my book here.