The Bewitching Novels, A Story of Love and Magic

The Bewitching is the first book in what is currently planned as a trilogy by Martin Douglas. The story follows Elyssa and Dantes, two people who had been deeply in love in past lives. The book starts in our current time as Dantes struggles with memories of Elyssa, who we find out mysteriously abandoned him several lifetimes earlier.

Elyssa, unlike Dantes, has no recollection of the past, or even Dantes himself. Her nightly dreams are haunted with images of a mysterious cove and a faceless man that she feels deeply connected to. On a nightly walk she soon stumbles upon the cove from her dreams and begins to visit it consistently in hopes of also finding the faceless man. He never appears, yet she has the strange feeling she is being watched from the shadows.

Upon a visit to downtown San Diego she comes across an odd shop that she feels strangely drawn to. Once inside her life takes an unexpected turn. Elyssa’s swept up into the hidden world of witches and magic, where demons and angels walk among us, and human myths wander the shadows unseen. Dantes too appears, and Elyssa has the uncanny feeling he may be the man from her dreams but something about him doesn’t seem quite right. It’s as if he carries a dark secret of his own, along with a past that he hesitates to share.

As Elyssa and Dantes struggle with their feelings for one another, and she delves deeper into the world of magic, they soon find themselves hunted by a gang of demons. Will Elyssa find the connection between Dantes and herself, and the secrets of their past that he seems determined to keep hidden for some unknown reason? Can Elyssa learn her new-found abilities well enough to fend off the demons that are set on taking her life and Dantes? Visit The Bewitching on Wattpad to read the first several chapters of this first novel by Martin Douglas, or browse TheBewitching.com website to learn more.

The Bewitching was inspired by the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the movie The Notebook. With the Beautiful Creatures film that recently came out, there are certainly elements there that are also similar in nature to The Bewitching Novel. If you’re a fan of any of these films or books, then there’s certain to be something in The Bewitching for you to enjoy.

The Bewitching Novels, A Story of Love and Magic

Hidden Bits in the Character Designs

Design was something that was important for me in my novel. One of the interesting things with putting together The Bewitching was when I had to come up with a website and the graphics for the characters. Pulling off a dark website is difficult enough. The character graphics and design were even more of a challenge. One of the things I wanted to do when designing the character graphics was to incorporate some of the spiritual things I had read about colors and symbols. Like the book itself, I attempted to mix the fantasy with some real world things.

In designing the graphics for each character I decided to use bright colors to contrast the dark colors of the website. I also wanted those colors to have meaning. For those who know a bit about colors, and how they relate to the spiritual world, you may notice that the colors used are representative of the characters emotional. In the case of one of the characters, the color used represents their material or wealth in the first book.

The colors weren’t too difficult to figure out. I did try to take into account the negative and positive meanings of them, usually leaning with the positive meanings for most of the characters. The symbols on the other hand were not as simple. They’ve changed meaning so much over time or as different groups have picked them up. For instance, people might be surprised to find out that christians and catholics garner a lot of their symbols from the Wiccans. The Wiccan’s are not much different in their approach to religion than the indians with their stories of nature and nature like gods. Even symbols like the Swastika have changed meaning over time. Where we usually associate the Swastika with evil or the Nazis, it actually originated as a symbol of peace in Australia. One particular symbol I used, while resembling others from history, is quite new. It has been adopted by different groups as though it does have a history older than it is.

There is so much contradicting information on symbols that I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular symbol appeared before then or with a different meaning. With the colors, I attempted to research the origins and meanings. I then matched them to the characters. I found some additional meanings to them later on that oddly enough more strongly coincide with the characters. I also attempted to keep them based off of Wiccan/Pagan, or Celtic lore which also seem to crossover quite a bit and borrow from one another.

I may change those symbols and their design over time as I write more of the next few books to coincide with the growth of the characters. In the meantime, I’m going to leave it up to the reader to see if they can figure out the meanings of the design on their own. I’d love to hear what you all think each symbol or color mean based on your own beliefs. Who knows, maybe someone will come up with something I can incorporate into the design for later stories.

A Special thanks to Madison Rockwell, Anne and Alice Pickard, and Les Belbot for allowing me to use their pictures in my design which so closely resembled my idea of the character’s looks. Also a special mention to Toby, pictured as Tobias, who sadly passed away recently. Our best wishes and prayers our with him upon the Rainbow Bridge.

Hidden Bits in the Character Designs