All The Write Stuff: The Witches of Claw and Fang

A hard-edged werewolf crashes into the life of an isolated witch who has temporarily given up her magic. They must overcome their differences and learn to harness their dangerous powers to stop a supernatural evil from corrupting their small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains.

The Witches of Claw and Fang

by Zach Stivers

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Thriller

Welcome to the cozy mountain town of Pineville, Virginia. It’s autumn, the leaves are gold and orange, the apples are crisp and sweet, town residents are going missing, and a bloodthirsty monster with ten-inch claws is loose in the forest.

Morgan Reaves tries her damndest NOT to use magic. That’s why she hid in Pineville, after all. But now, Morgan needs to dust off her spell-casting skills, ASAP. Problem is, she may have lost her touch.

She has another problem, too, and it smells like wet dog.

Max: AKA the naked man with rip-cord tight muscles that stumbled out of the woods near Morgan’s house, ranting about curses and conspiracies and a coven of witches.

Is he a werewolf? Well, yes. But he’s also the only one who can help her defeat whatever evil is threatening her adopted hometown. That is, if they manage to not kill each other first...

GUEST POST

Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

When I was in third grade, I had this weird quirk where everything I did needed to have some over-the-top grandiose purpose behind it. I remember my elementary teachers would assign us five to ten vocabulary words, and instruct us that for homework we had to use each of them in a sentence. For some reason, I felt obliged to make my homework much harder than it needed to be, and chose to add the additional task of using the vocab words all in one overarching, connecting story. So each week I would turn a little two or three page story into my teacher, with my vocabulary words sort-of hidden within, instead of just writing ten simple, unrelated sentences.

Looking back now, I’m awfully appreciative of those teachers. I did this in third, fourth and fifth grade if I remember correctly. Any of those teachers could have asked me to stop, to just do the assignment as normal so they didn’t have to spend the extra time going through my silly little elementary school stories and find out if I used the words properly. But they didn’t. So, Ms. Wappes and Ms. Darbyshire and Ms Jones, THANK YOU.

Instead of that, they gave me lots of compliments and they began reading my stories out to the class, and commending me on going above and beyond. A couple of my other classmates started doing this too, and it led to us having weekly stories read out loud to the class by different students. Naturally, we kept pushing the envelope, and made the stories all interconnect, week to week, sort of like an elementary school soap opera. And my stories were definitely not the best of the class! I remember being blown away by a couple of them. But that’s when, I think, the book-writing bug got sort of lodged in my head permanently. I learned that it was more fun to conjure up some imaginary world and concoct an elaborate story than just churn out mindless sentences.

I never did anything nearly as impressive or ambitious in math or social studies or science class, that’s for sure. But since third-grade, story-telling has been an ingrained part of me, a sort-of understood trait, like having blonde hair and blue eyes. It’s in my genes, maybe. I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t want to be a story-teller, after that.

Tell us something really interesting that's happened to you!

When I was in middle school, three friends and I got stuck on a sandbar off Captiva when a massive shark swam between us and the beach. (Massive to us at the time, at least) Being Florida boys, we knew the difference between shark and dolphin, and this creature was bigger than a dolphin, and not coming up to the surface to breathe. It swam back and forth, big dorsal fin and vertical tail fin slicing through the waves, just circling up and down the length of the sandbar. We felt like it was just waiting for us to make the mistake of leaving the sandbar and entering the deeper water. I remember the tide was rising and it got to the point where we couldn’t wait any longer, and we had to book it and swim for the beach when the shark was at its furthest point from us. We splashed and stomped and swam and caused a whole bunch of commotion and all made it back safe.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure the shark was just looking for food along the shore, like stingrays and fish, not hunting four scrawny pre-teens caught having a mud fight on the sandbar.

If you knew you'd die tomorrow, how would you spend your last day?

Probably setting up an elaborate, over-complicated plan where I would write dozens of letters and then schedule them to be sent out sporadically over the next year to my wife. Initially, she would struggle to move on from me and this would hinder her ability to learn how to be happy and find true love again, but ultimately she’ll realize that her happiness isn’t tied to me, or my letters, or to anyone else but her own self, and she’ll be grateful for the extra year of goodbyes that she got to have with her husband. (Idk, whatever the plot for PS I LOVE YOU was- kinda toxic, if you ask me)

Who is your hero and why?

Steve Irwin. He was one of the most pure-hearted men in the world, and his commitment to- and passion for- animal conservation was so authentic and admirable. Seeing his children shoulder his legacy as young adults themselves now is so heartwarming! The animals deserved an advocate like him, and if all of us pursued our passion as single-mindedly as Steve Irwin pursued his, the world would be a much better place- for humans and for the rest of the living creatures on Earth.

What kind of world ruler would you be?

From my office chair, it’s easy to say that I’d be a loving, democratic world ruler who would establish a system of governance that ensured the right to food, water, housing and recreation to all mankind, then step down and set a precedent for all future world leaders…

But, based on almost all of human history, the odds are high that I’d probably easily be corrupted, fall in love with the power and the glory and rule like a tyrannical dictator that only looked out for the good of the few, and eventually would be violently overthrown.

EXCERPT

She leaned into the car and reloaded the veggies one at a time back into the bag, her head pressed against the seat as she rooted around on the floor mats. Joey started barking.

“I said he’s not there!”

She felt the final onion just on her fingertips, but she couldn’t quite reach it. She adjusted and stretched out her hand… Joey’s barking got louder, closer, and more frantic.

What the hell was the matter with the dog?

The car jolted sideways, slamming Morgan in the shins, knocking her legs out behind her, wrenching the breath out of her lungs. A massive vice-like hand gripped her ankle, yanked her upward and tossed her haphazardly into the air. She crashed down into the lawn some twenty yards away, her skull bouncing hard off the ground. She blinked, trying to clear her head. She was in the middle of the lawn.

How was she in the middle of the lawn?

Joey yelped. She looked over as a massive furry brown thing slapped Joey halfway across the yard. Bear, she thought, in a detached, concussed sort-of-way, but it was clearly not a bear.

It was taller and thinner than a bear and it looked more wolf than bear and it looked more demonic than either wolf or bear and it glared at her with ferocious golden eyes. It took a step toward her, and she could see it had a thick scar running up its ribs onto its neck, could see sinewy muscles under brown fur, could see absurdly large white teeth inside a snarling lupine mouth. Could see a torn piece of her mail haphazardly dangling from its sickeningly large, clawed hands.

A scream got stuck in her throat.

Fear flooded her mind, pushing out the fog of the concussion. She knew she needed to act, before the monster turned her and Joey into dinner. But she felt pressed frozen into the ground.

Joey found his courage before she did. The dog barked and lunged at the monster. The beast leapt toward Joey.

“No!”

She pushed out her hands, fingers dancing, wrists snapping with an instinctual twist. The wind gusted behind her, and she heard a musical sizzling zap and the demon-wolf-thing, mere moments from striking Joey, yelped and leapt back, fleeing for the woods. Joey barked at it and chased it to the edge of the property but did not follow it past the tree line. Morgan ran for the front door, pulling the keys from her sweater pocket.

“Joey, come!”

She fumbled at the deadbolt. She tried the wrong key at first in her panic, flipped and flipped the key chain around, almost dropped the key chain completely, found the right key, jammed it at the door and it bounced off the hole and then it bounced off the hole again and she knew the beast-monster must be emerging from the woods by now, surely it was coming for her, blood-red slobber dripping off its fangs, and she realized she still was using the wrong key and she groaned and then she found it, the correct key, finally—thank god—but her hands trembled and the key wouldn’t slide in the hole, and then the keys slipped out from her sweaty fingers and they dropped onto the deck, and then, as if in slow motion, gravity pulled them through a crack between the wood planks and the blackness under the deck consumed them.

She wanted to scream and yell and pound on the door.

Focus.

She heard rustling in the woods.

Joey began barking again at her side.

It’s coming.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

She pressed two fingers against the keyhole, extended her other hand out into the air, flicked her fingers, and visualized the lock turning.

Remember.

Remember the old ways.

Remember what your father forbid.

The door unlocked.

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Kobo * The Wild Rose Press* Bookbub * Goodreads

Book Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Claw-Fang-Zach-Stivers-ebook/dp/B0DBM77W8Y/

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-witches-of-claw-and-fang/id6590631638

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-witches-of-claw-and-fang-zach-stivers/1146027139?ean=2940185697429

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-witches-of-claw-and-fang

The Wild Rose Press: https://wildrosepress.com/product/the-witches-of-claw-and-fang/

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-witches-of-claw-and-fang-by-zach-stivers-2024-10-03

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216993508

About the Author

Zach Stivers lives with his wife in Virginia, at the foot of the Shenandoah National Park. He loves to tell people they do lots of hiking in their free time, but usually they just go for a short stroll in the woods with their dogs and then stop off for a drink or two at the local brewery. That still counts as hiking, right? He has a degree in English Literature from Florida State University, runs really slow half-marathons, and leads an overly-competitive book club that reads a book a week … or else.

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