What is her name?
Rose Tyler, Carlie’s grandmother. She’s one of the main characters in Into the Mists and its sequels Into the Dark and Into the Light – and she also appears in the Into the Mists chronicle Into the Storm, and will have her own book(s) in the not-too-distant future…

Is she a fictional or historical character?
Rose is fictional, although the magic she weaves and the rituals she conducts are all real. She is a priestess of the goddess, marking the wheel of the year, the cycle of the seasons and the phases of the moon, and connecting with the magic of nature, as other pagans and witches also do today. She is a witch, sharing a spiritual path with druids, shamans and other pagans who follow an earth-based spiritualty. She believes in the goddess, and has encountered Otherworldly beings, yet she is very grounded, very sensible; she’s spiritual but not dogmatic, embraces all paths, and encourages exploration and the challenging of your own beliefs.

When and where is the story set?
The books are set in Summer Hill, a small village in south-west England, which is shrouded in the magical mists that are a character themselves. It’s a fictional village, but there are parallels with Glastonbury, the fabled Isle of Avalon, and its magic. The story takes place in modern times, although there’s no Facebook, no smartphones, for Rose is connected to nature and the earth, to the rhythm of sunrise and sunset, and lives a simple life as the centre of her small village and its community. In the first book she is shocked to discover that she has a granddaughter, who was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. There are a few flashbacks to Carlie’s life there, but most of the story unfolds in Summer Hill and the surrounding countryside.

What is the main conflict? What messes up her life?
Rose is the village wise woman and priestess, and considers herself happy and content. She has a wide circle of friends, and a very close inner circle of women she works magic with, who have become her family. She devotes much of her time to her metaphysical centre, where she performs healings, runs self-development workshops and stocks books, ritual clothes, herbs and magical items. She’s also close to Mike, who was her daughter’s childhood sweetheart, and is a surrogate grandmother to his two children. Yet tragedy has marked Rose’s life. Twenty years ago her teenaged daughter Violet ran away, never to be heard from again, and a month after that her grieving husband Louis, overwhelmed with grief, took his own life. While many people would have left town to make a fresh start somewhere else, Rose stayed, just in case her daughter ever returned. And while that will never happen, when we meet her, Rose has just received a message from Australia, from her daughter’s best friend, who breaks the news that Violet had been alive all this time – but has just died – and that she had a daughter, Carlie, who needs a home.

What should we know about Rose?
Rose is a wise woman, a priestess, an earth mother, a slightly unconventional woman who wears swirly, floaty, colourful clothes, silver and crystal jewellery, and her long silver hair flowing loose down her back. She is strong yet sweet. Kind and caring. She has suffered so much, yet it has made her more compassionate, not less. She’s a nurse, a healer, a herbalist, a ritualist. She loves the magic of the earth, of nature, of the seasons – she wakes with the sun and dances with the moon, tends her garden and heals with plants. And she has a familiar, Luther, a gorgeous black cat who she speaks to, communicates with and works magic alongside. Luther is a part of Rose, and he helps Carlie when she first arrives, and is still so hostile to her previously unknown grandmother.

What is the personal goal of the character?
Rose is the centre of her community, the person others go to with their problems, a kind and caring woman who is full of love and compassion, and her purpose in life is to heal, to help, to encourage others to be the best they can be and reach their potential. When she discovers she has a granddaughter, it breaks her heart that she arrives already hating her, yet she tries hard not to take it personally, and to give Carlie as much space as she needs – while also trying to support her in her grief and understand why she is so hostile. In the first book Rose is determined to solve the mystery of her missing daughter and piece together what happened all those years ago, while trying to find a way to help her granddaughter heal.

Who is the publisher, and where can we read more about the book? Are there more in the series?
Into the Mists, Into the Dark, Into the Light and the Into the Mists Trilogy Hardcover Omnibus and Into the Mists: A Journal, are published by Blessed Bee Books, and are available in print and ebook formats. You can order them through Amazon and other online retailers, your local bookstore, from blessedbeebooks.com/shop, or the Blessed Bee Books etsy store. The author is currently working on three new Into the Mists Chronicles…

You can read Carlie’s profile here…