Eudora is the matriarch of the local coven, Malik is the younger cousin to her best friend. What happens when they bump into each other outside of a shop in town? Sparks fly and magic happens on the most sacred of magical nights.

My name is Natalie Bartley and I am the author of A Steamy New England Samhain. The book is about a woman who seems content in her single life, and then meets the man who changes it all. It is set around the Pagan festival of Samhain (Hallowe’en), the last sabbat (holiday) in the year. More erotica than romance, it does have the happily ever after trope in it that romance readers expect. It is short and steamy, and I am proud of it.

I was inspired to write it by a day dream I had. My partner and I plan on opening our witch shop and my thoughts were along the lines of what if we met there? What if our age gap were reversed and he was the younger one in the relationship? It really is based on that fantasy I had, but obviously not written as us. I realize that is a Mary Sue, and if it turns people off from my writing, I do apologize. Eudora and I are so very different, as are Malik and my partner, and I worked very hard to make sure that was the case. I personally dislike the Mary Sue cliché and try my hardest not to write it. 

My hope is that readers will fall in love with the characters. It’s not a groundbreaking story, it doesn’t dive into the nitty gritty of humanity. It is just romantic erotica meant to help people feel good. I have two more books in this series (Yule Be In Love and Light My Candlemas) and five more planned after. Each book is set at one of the eight sabbats of the Pagan Wheel of the Year, with the last book finishing up at Mabon, or the Autumn Equinox. I hope to eventually put them all together into one compendium at the end of it all. I received some feedback about this idea, and also plan to offer a little “Year After” short once the compendium is done, only to be included in the big collection. This will catch up with the characters Eudora and Malik, and the others we meet through the other books a year after the last book, to see how they are all doing. 

I started writing many years ago, putting my stuff on Wattpad, but only had the courage to publish properly at the insistence of a friend of mine back in 2019. He’s demanding a sequel to my debut novel, Love and Pain in Zion, which I wasn’t planning on writing, but it is nice to know the story is so well appreciated. Being invited to write an article for Authors’ Lounge is wonderful. I was contacted by Jennifer Jackson via Twitter about it and jumped at the chance. Anything to get my work out there. I hope that my writing is well received, even if it isn’t in a genre I have seen on Reader’s Magnet, there is an audience for everyone, right?

Thank you for letting me talk about one of my books, and myself.

Natalie Bartley

Learn More About A Steamy New England Samhain and Natalie Bartley

You can find her books on Amazon. Her Works In Progress in Wattpad. The rest of her social information is in her Linktree.