Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer

Print featuring a forest slope in snow with trees trunks causing long shadows in the low winter light

'Silhouettes' by Vermont printmaker Jeanne Amato #womensart

Two bananas on a wooden table with the text ‘Banana for scale.’ The left banana is more than twice the size of the right banana.

I mean.

#mostrelatablecat

Now I want to know how they translated all the surnames...

I love this fact!

Also, I know a cat called Tinytoes. xx

Line drawing. A witch’s broomstick, held together by a bundle of tape in the middle. At the end huddles and adorable tabby cat with white socks, not sitting up but lying flat and clinging with desperate terror, its little eyes screwed shut.

My favourite illustration from childhood.

Jill Murphy, A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch

Yes!!! Thank you so much blessed person. xxx

Historians and naturalists, please help. What did they call a jellyfish around 1600?

Whooo wants a horror workshop! @alexdavis1981.bsky.social always does great events.

My workshop is 12pm Saturday 7 December, where we'll experiment with Christmas spookiness in stories of community.

Title: "Can't Survive With Em, Can't Survive Without Em."

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/darkness-i...

I mean my parents live there so no disrespect, they're not boring people - but a more soulless part of the city is hard to imagine.

It's kind of exactly where you'd expect a silly nob-off like the Battle of Blythe Road to actually happen! 3/3

Olympia London - Wikipedia

These days it's basically a conference zone. It's just by the Olympia exhibition/conference centre, which shapes the neighbourhood like a rock dropped into a pond. It's mostly restaurants for expo-goers; the heart of the place is not for those who live there. 2/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia...

Photograph of a suburban London terrace: big, respectable Victorian buildings with commercial awnings on the ground floor of each. Central is the green awning of George's Cafe, also labelling itself Cafe Restaurant. As London terraces go it's very characterless.

Nope, this is it! It's opposite Blythe House, which was built as the HQ of the Post Office Savings Bank and then became a V&A archive - it was being built at the time. The area was all about the Post Office. 1/

I grew up a couple of streets away from where it happened! A more bureaucratic and less occult style of London you couldn’t imagine.

Fantasy idea:

A crown’s shows power though stillness. Can I fight or work in it? Sirrah, I do not need to.

So imagine the monarch chained into a vast, locking cage of gear. Gold ribs fixed to the wall snap around his chest. His feet encased in pearled tarsals. The king isn’t crowned, he’s bound.

Stop advertising me ear drops, algorithm. I don’t have wax build-up, I’m just not listening to you.

You know people debate whether Shakespeare called his witches the ‘weird’, ‘wayward’ or ‘wayward’ sisters?

I say we resolve this with a Geordie accent, which gives ‘weird’ two syllables anyway. Someone tell the RSC.

Oof, poor you! Sending good vibes. xx

"Sometimes the rats still bit Letty at night, but under Nicholas West’s rule she was happier than she had ever been."

‘I did not witness the origin of its speechifying,’ Ephraim said tightly. ‘I came in during the talk of Little Tomkin and suchlike. Then I told Porter that I’d have no unkenned doings on any property of mine, and,’ he added through his teeth, ‘Porter said that the cat was a good beast and he begged me not to hurt it, that his children loved it and it was a fine hunter and I should consider the safety of my stores from mice. And then the animal said that the mice were all very well but that it was no common hireling and would catch coneys if it chose, and that it dearly loved a fine fat haunch fed on grass, such as noblecats should eat.’ Dislike of the grotesquerie was stiffening Ephraim’s every line, but evidently his memory of this politically minded mog’s opinions was rather good. John was bouncing up to ask more on the subject, but at this point there was a knock upon the jamb.

#booksky #bookqw word: JAM. Tricky in this story!

Ephraim Brady, unpleasant landlord, has come to the fairy-smiths with a problem: his tenants the Porter family own a cat, and the cat has started talking.

Book available here: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj

Cover art by Ben Baldwin shows a creature crouching in a low tunnel entrance lined with grey stones and partly hidden by green undergrowth and white flowers. The creature has pale skin covered in sparse black hair and it looks a bit like an ape, a bit like a bear, and completely unlike either of those. Book extract reads: I looked up and stared at nothing. An idea was floating just out of reach. A moment later, it hit me like a smack in the face. I ran up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. In the front bedroom, I emptied Fin’s suitcase onto the bed. I turned over her clothes, raking them apart with my hands. Nothing. I realised anyone outside would be able to see what I was doing. They’d also see I’d lost the towels I’d been wearing on the stairs. I quickly drew the curtains. Fin had hung the dress bag for her bridesmaid’s frock on the front of the wardrobe. I pulled the zip down so hard it jammed. I forced myself to go more slowly. Taking the frock out of the bag, I shook it. The shoes and the headdress of silk flowers fell onto the floor. I didn’t care about them. I carefully turned the dress inside out. I saw a fleck of white caught in a seam. A tiny, downy feather.

Book Quote Wednesday's word is 'jam' #BookQW
To say Dan and Fin are in right pickle doesn't begin to cover the challenges they're facing. Has Dan had an idea how to get them out of this sticky situation?
Modern fantasy rooted in British myths and folklore, widely available from retailers.

Kit Whitfield on Instagram 0 likes, 0 comments - kit_whitfield_books on November 18, 2025

I swore I'd master Instagram this year. Just posted my second reel and already I can see how it's going to BREAK MY BRAIN: you can't even look at what you posted without being offered metrics. This is wild stuff.

www.instagram.com/p/DRMo70lDOcn/

Just polishing up my next @gnofhorror.com review! This one will be on Hellraiser.

We all know and love the movie, but honestly? I think I've got a take no one's said before. Or at least not to me. Hold on to your pins, guys...

A chocolate cake, elaborately decorated with scallops of piped buttercream in shades of brown and cream. Ringing the side is a repeating pattern: a piped shape almost like a blunt-tipped heart, and curled up in the centre, edible, realistic and terrifying: a centipede.

Is it time for centipede cake?

Ask yourself this: when is it NOT time for centipede cake?

Created by @vegantreats

I have the kind of weird not-quite-headache that suggests I’m about to pupate into another form of life.

The Mighty Healer Verity Holloway’s nineteenth-century cousin Thomas Holloway’s patent medicine empire was so ubiquitous, Charles Dickens commented that if you’d murdered someone with the name Holloway, you’d…

My biography of Thomas Holloway, my Victorian quack doctor cousin, is el cheapo at the moment.

It's got...

💊 Dubious cures
❄️ Haunted polar bears
🤡 A literal clown dentist
💰Philanthropy as competitive sport

www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Mighty-H...

Kit Whitfield on Instagram 0 likes, 0 comments - kit_whitfield_books on November 15, 2025

My pals, I am attempting to master Instagram. Here’s my first video (do you call them reels?) Pop over and give me a follow if you’re up for more.

www.instagram.com/reel/DRE5vuS...

Painting. A cat-faced female nude with pale skin, crowned with an outcrop of spiky green leaves, plays the flute. Her hair trails down in a long red cloud that stretches out to form a kind of chariot, along which rave the skeletons of prancing animals.

Tis the season…

Danse Macabre by Art of Maquenda

Skull with emerald in eyes

Part 40 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg dnd

Charles Darwin's Whalebone walking stick

Good grief. I mean the actual Salem tragedy had an unsually high proportion of male victims, but how are you supposed to teach it if you can't, like, TEACH it?!