Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
@kitwhitfield.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1.3K following 3.5K posts
Novelist ‘as tart, dark and juicy as a summer pudding’. World Fantasy Award finalist. She/her.

Timeline cleanse queen.

The Gyrford series: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj

Horror reviews: https://tinyurl.com/5cyf7x5v

Agent: Sophie Hicks.
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · Nov 22
Art by my husband illustrating one of the creatures of my IN THE HEART OF HIDDEN THINGS. (tinyurl.com/nvvetupj)

The brambles had been talking to themselves for a while, but it’s only when someone uprooted one that they started to get really stroppy…
Pen sketch. Spindly bundle of spikes with a blackberry for a head rears up like a mantis. Text caption: ‘Scratchity GOWAY!’ Pen sketch. Skeletal bramble bushes all over spikes hunch like spiders.
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Working up my next @gnofhorror.com.

No, the dog doesn't die in GOOD BOY.

But it still has to be a dog.

Yeah, dog lovers are either going to love or hate me for this one...
November 25, 2025 at 10:01 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
This is partly for a @gnofhorror.com review and partly just a lost media request.

Anyone who was a kid in the 80s, do you remember a kids series where they filmed animals doing natural behaviour and then added human voice-overs, different animals and story each time? 1/
November 24, 2025 at 9:27 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
An eerily numinous Monday morning to you all.

Artist: Luke Hillstad
Painting. A dark, shaded forest with ragged pines receding in the distance. On a bare branch in the foreground sits a great white peacock, its tail sweeping down towards us and its head regarding us with confident contemplation.
November 24, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
'Silhouettes' by Vermont printmaker Jeanne Amato #womensart
Print featuring a forest slope in snow with trees trunks causing long shadows in the low winter light
November 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I mean.
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.
November 23, 2025 at 11:26 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
My favourite illustration from childhood.

Jill Murphy, A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch
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.
November 22, 2025 at 9:44 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Historians and naturalists, please help. What did they call a jellyfish around 1600?
November 21, 2025 at 12:51 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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...
Darkness in the Fields - Midwinter 2
Join us for two days of online folk horror events, with workshops and interview from an exciting variety of writers in the genre.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 21, 2025 at 11:06 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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.
November 21, 2025 at 7:57 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Stop advertising me ear drops, algorithm. I don’t have wax build-up, I’m just not listening to you.
November 20, 2025 at 3:16 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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.
November 20, 2025 at 3:09 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
#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
‘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.
November 19, 2025 at 10:37 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
julietemckenna.bsky.social
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.
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.
November 19, 2025 at 10:33 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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/
Kit Whitfield on Instagram
0 likes, 0 comments - kit_whitfield_books on November 18, 2025
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November 18, 2025 at 12:33 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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...
November 18, 2025 at 10:40 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Is it time for centipede cake?

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

Created by @vegantreats
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.
November 17, 2025 at 11:01 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I have the kind of weird not-quite-headache that suggests I’m about to pupate into another form of life.
November 16, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
verityholloway.bsky.social
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...
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…
www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
November 16, 2025 at 11:09 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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...
Kit Whitfield on Instagram
0 likes, 0 comments - kit_whitfield_books on November 15, 2025
www.instagram.com
November 15, 2025 at 12:25 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Tis the season…

Danse Macabre by Art of Maquenda
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.
November 15, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
oregonthedm.bsky.social
Part 40 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg dnd

Charles Darwin's Whalebone walking stick
Skull with emerald in eyes
November 13, 2025 at 5:37 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE is a great play, but there's something very mid-20th-century about looking at such a highly gendered issue and going, 'You know what this should be about? Women fighting over a middle-aged guy's Puritan D.'
Cartoon image: a microphone in a circle, around which are the block letters, UNPOPULAR OPINION.
November 14, 2025 at 12:20 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Hey hey! Fancy joining a workshop by me tomorrow at 5.30, and/or workshops and interviews with fascinating people like @tiffaniangus.bsky.social, Emilia Hart and Michelle Paver? Sign up here:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winter-hau...
WINTER HAUNTS 2025
Ghost story, gothic and supernatural fiction day Saturday 15th November, 10:30am-6:30pm approx Online via Google Meet
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 14, 2025 at 10:09 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Time for GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S FRANKENSTEIN DISCOURSE!

I keep seeing people worry about whether del Toro properly did justice to Mary Shelley. And I have to ask: why is that del Toro's job more than anyone else's?

And also, didn't he?

And also, how could he? He's not a mother. 1/
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
#booksky #bookqw word: GIRL

The men of the Smith family are fairy-smiths. The women are midwives. It's all earth-witching one way or another, with the same combination of arcane knowledge, social work and wishing more of your neighbours used the sense God gave them.
Aunt Pell had little patience with the trade in aphrodisiacs, or ‘notions and potions’, as she called them – if you thought a brew was the way to heat your lover’s blood for you, she’d say, then you were doing something wrong in the bedroom, and if manners wouldn’t get you someone’s heart, then there was no point witching for it. Her interest was in herbs for pain, and for stopping things before they came to the point of needing a midwife. ‘There’s no sure herb,’ she told Jedediah, watching his progress with a critical eye as he dug her garden, ‘not to prevent. To get a girl right again once she’s caught, yes, but it’s a messy business and full of chance. It’s all very well for me to tell the girls to play other games or have the lad pull out in time, but someone needs to tell the lads, that’s what.’ ‘Well, don’t look to me,’ said Jedediah, giving the spade a particularly energetic swing by way of excusing his flushed face. ‘I won’t do it.’
November 12, 2025 at 4:02 PM