Witchcraft in the Harem

The Great Witchcraft in the Harem blog tour of 2013 kicks off today right here, and will be visiting a number of great blogs over the next two weeks.

I've started in the middle there. Let me backtrack.

Yesterday my first collection of short stories was published. I've changed genre since I was published by Macmillan, and am now writing what you could call literary fantasy. Well, whatever it is, it's still pushing out the boat of weirdness and hoisting the mainsail of unpredictability.

You’re running away from something terrible. You think you’ve escaped it, this thing, but it turns out it’s waiting for you in all the places you hide: your house, your garden, a self-help group, a seraglio, the island of Zanzibar, a museum in Turin, a hot air balloon in Canada, even in the ladies’ room of your favourite nightclub. You’ve carried it into these places with you. It’s inside you. And now it’s time for it to come out.

This first collection of acclaimed short stories by Aliya Whiteley takes the reader to the strangest, deepest corners of life experience. Grotesque, unsettling, and often very funny, Witchcraft in the Harem deals with birth and betrayal, love and loss, and all the terrible thoughts we want to escape, and find still waiting for us at the journey’s end.

Acclaim for the Book

‘The experience of reading this collection is like being waterboarded by an angel. Shocking, heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, this is some of the best writing I’ve ever seen. If you like Aimee Bender or Etgar Keret, you will love Witchcraft in the Harem.’ —World Fantasy Award-winner Lavie Tidhar

I love the beetles on my front cover.

You can purchase the book right here.


There is going to be a launch party in London, on 13th May, details of which you can find here. And there is also a blog tour (fanfare!). That's what this post is. The beginning of the blog tour. Details of the blog tour are up on my own blog here. I'll be answering questions, talking shop, and explaining why I chose the beetley cover and what it's like to change genre and fiction length, in lots of different electronic places.

For instance, tomorrow I will be at Iain Rowan's blog. He's a very talented writer of crime and speculative fiction, and we chatted about our favourite authors and getting stuck in lifts.

Later on I'll be stopping off at the blogs of lots of familiar MNW faces. Hope to see you there.