I made a resolution to read more this year. I want to dive in to your story and not come up for air until the next one is in my hand.

In the meantime, I've been listening to stories. This one, Vacui Magia, by L.S. Johnson, churned around in my guts for longer than I expected. The structure, that of a spell or list of instructions, provides a comforting scaffolding for a very disturbing, but personally familiar, tale. It is about parents, the weight of legacy and the extremes of grief. It is also about witches:

"No one ever thinks it will come to this. Yet you wonder, now, if every witch has a time in her life when she finds herself crawling through damp darkness, clothes dirty and hair tangled, wild with a desperate, fearful hope. You will not read about this in any book. You will never truly know how many have crawled like you, have panted like you, have felt that awful hammering of failure and loss in their heads as you feel it now."

You can listen at the above link or read here.