Author Guest Post with Victory Witherkeigh: The Girl

The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl.

Welcome to one of the December 8th stops on the blog tour for The Girl by Victory Witherkeigh with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

Author Guest Post

Create a playlist of songs that inspired your latest book.

There are some odd assumptions about those who write in genre fiction, especially about dark fantasy or horror genres. When I first started telling people that was my genre of choice, I’d sometimes get this look like they expected me to stand in front of them like Lydia from Beetlejuice or Wednesday from the Addams Family. So while I enjoy both those female characters, I use music to help get my mindset needed to explore the macabre or inner turmoil of dark fantasy and horror.

 I’ll use certain songs that stir emotions if I need to be in a particular feeling for a scene or try to brainstorm. This was especially important for me when I was writing my debut novel, The Girl, which is coming out with Cinnabar Moth Publishing on December 6, 2022. I wanted toexamine the gray areas of growing up as a young female navigating through rejection, lost friendships, hurt relationships, and choosing imperfection. My ethnicity in the Southeast Asia/Pacific Island is often a mixture and melting pot for various folkloric dances and songs that have developed and survived through colonial powers and world wars.

With that in mind, these were my top twenty songs that helped my brain get into the zone or set the tone for my writing sessions for The Girl.

• Naomi Scott from the live-action version of Disney’s Aladdin “Speechless” (full version)

• “The Sound of Silence” is an original song and lyrics written by Simon & Garfunkel in 1964, but the version I used is the cover from the band Disturbed, released in 2015 on their album Immortalized.

• Alanis Morissette’s 1995 song “You Oughta Know” from her album Jagged Little Pill.

• “One-Winged Angel” was composed and arranged by Nobuo Uematsu for the Final Fantasy VII Soundtrack.

• “Why Does It Hurt So Bad?” from Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits Album.

• “I Knew I Loved You” from Savage Garden’s 1999 album Affirmation.

• “Fifteen” by Taylor Swift from her 2008 album Fearless.

• “Don’t Speak” from No Doubt’s 1995 album Tragic Kingdom.

• “Butterfly” by Mariah Carey from the album of the same name.

• “Kill You” by Eminem from the album The Marshall Mathers LP.

• Johnny Cash’s “I Won’t Back Down” from the album American III: Solitary Man.

• John William’s “Darth Vader Theme” from the Star Wars franchise.

• Jewel’s “Foolish Games” from her 1995 album Pieces of You.

• “Criminal” by Fiona Apple in the album of the same name in 1995.

• “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie was released in 1981 as a single.

• “Changes (feat: Talent)” by 2Pac, was released in 1998 after his death.

• “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” Tina Turner’s most successful single from her fifth album, Private Dancer.

• P!nk’s “Don’t Let Me Get Me” from her 2001 album Missundaztood.

• “Bring Me To Life” from Evanescence’s debut album Fallen, releasedin 2003

• “Singkil” recording from the Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company from the album by the same name

I will also note that I listed the songs in no particular order. Hopefully, this list will inspire the next writer with their work. Or maybe provide a fun way to read The Girl.

About the Book

The Girl
by Victory Witherkeigh

Published 6 December 2022
Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC

Genre: YA Horror
Page Count: 354
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl’s long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother’s lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them.

The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her for her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer.

The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children’s parents didn’t despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother?

The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only embrace it. It could wait. The girl’s parents were doing much of its work already.

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Excerpt

“— there are certain… misconceptions about me, pretty girl. I, and those I command, end life. That is our purpose, always has been. Our valley is its own land as we are our own kingdom. Death is the one act all living things will succumb to, whether good, evil, or in-between. We don’t have a stake in moral debates or questions, as your kind has called it, since we are a constant, an equalizer. We come for everything and everyone. But humanity has definitely found some of the most creative ways to end life over the centuries, and every so often in history, we’ve granted a request to aid them in doing so.”

Only then did he look over at the girl, his tongue darting out to lick the sugar off his lips. She had barely breathed as he had been speaking, her tongue building more saliva as she became wholly entranced with his words, almost as though she saw the visions of his brethren carrying out their jobs over the centuries. She found herself a little startled that the sound of her own heartbeat was thudding loudly in her ears as he seemed to hesitate to tell her the next part.

“Your ancestors are one such example,” he said, head tilting slightly and as she gasped, he continued. “You, my dear, are the descendent of not one but two who sacrificed to one of mine, my finest general, in fact. You learned the story of Lapulapu?”

About the Author

Victory Witherkeigh is a female Filipino author originally from Los Angeles, CA, currently living in the Las Vegas area. Victory was a finalist for Wingless Dreamer’s 2020 Overcoming Fear Short Story award and a 2021 winner of the Two Sisters Writing and Publishing Short Story Contest.

She has print publications in the horror anthologies Supernatural Drabbles of Dread through Macabre Ladies Publishing, Bodies Full of Burning through Sliced Up Press, and In Filth It Shall Be Found through OutCast Press.

Her first novel, set to debut in Spring 2024 with Cinnabar Moth Publishing, has been a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award, a 2020 Cinnamon Press Literature Award Honoree, and long-listed in the 2021 Voyage YA Book Pitch Contest.

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Giveaway Alert!

Victory Witherkeigh will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.