Dear Booksellers,
As a former bookseller myself, it is my absolute delight to bring you Now, Conjurers, my first novel.
I know how hard it is to capture the abstract something that makes a person pick up a particular book… and so, ultimately, I wrote this story for the only person I was sure would want to read it: my own teenage self.
That younger me is still there in my head—just barely out of reach in the past, perpetually feeling feelings and doing things that will turn me into the person I am now—and, sometime back in the early 2000s, she’s looking through all of the genre books she loves most for the lesbian character that reminds her of herself.
For the group of misfits that act as a loving substitute for a crappy home life.
For the queer romance that mirrors her own romance with the girl she really likes.
In that way, I actually wrote Now, Conjurers for all of us. Because, of course, lots of booksellers (maybe even you!) are total weirdos, are queer, are living odd lives on the fringes of the mainstream… or, at the very least, are open to all of those things. And maybe you were actually just like Nesbit or Dove or Drea or Brandy, the teen coven of alternative kids who discover that a monster is responsible for the death of their leader.
Or maybe you’re like that dead leader, and like so many other kids I knew, back in my own grubby adolescence… the kids who kept all of their pain and fear locked inside, fighting monsters that absolutely nobody around them knew about
“I wrote this story for the only person I was sure would want to read it: my own teenage self”
Maybe you’re one of those people with interests that straddle that weird gap between the totally stupid and the legitimately intellectual. Maybe you like wordplay, creepy carnivals, the disembodied voice behind a dark curtain that calls you onward, the idea of magic that works.
Maybe you’re not someone that your parents are proud of.
Maybe you’re a good person anyway.
Teenage me was all of those things, and I tried to tell a story that would thrill her, that she would want to read again and again. I hope the teenager in you feels the same way.
– Freddie Kölsch
About the book
06 Jun 2024
A heart-breaking, LGBTQ dark romance for young adults, with star-crossed lovers – perfect for fans of V.E.Schwab and 90s cult-classic The Craft.
November 1999, North Dana, Massachusetts. The body of Bastion Attia – high school quarterback, secret witch, and Nesbit Nuñez’s even-more-secret boyfriend – is discovered at the edge of Stepwood Cemetery.
As Nesbit and his coven of queer misfits investigate Bastion’s death they discover local folktales of Mr. Nous, a terrifying wish-granting creature, one whose gifts come at a terrible price.The coven must do battle against an age-old evil before it strikes again …
Now, Conjurers is a wildly original, spinechilling YA debut about queer found family and a love that outlasts death.
