Josie Way sits down for a question-and-answer session with dru’s book musings so that we, the readers, can get to know her better. Are you ready? Josie, take it away!

What is your full name?
People call me Josie, but my full name is Josephine Ailith Way. “Josephine” comes from my father, a history teacher who named me and my two sisters after French queens. “Ailith” is my maternal grandmother’s name.

How old are you?
Twenty-seven.

What is your profession?
I’m a librarian.

Do you have a significant other?
Nope.

Do you have any children?
No kids, just a spoiled cat.

Do you have any siblings?
I have two sisters. Marie Antoinette—Toni—is five years older than I am. She’s a physician and mama of my beloved niece Letty. Eugénie—Jean—is the youngest, and she’s a yoga instructor.

Are your parents nearby?
They live in Maryland, on the opposite side of the country. I miss them.

Who is your best friend?
Lalena, Wilfred’s town psychic, is my best friend. We have a standing date on Tuesday nights for dinner. Her business reading tarot cards and palms from her trailer at the Magnolia Rolling Estates is more about turning a buck than tapping into true psychic ability, but she’s solidly book-learned in magic. Although she doesn’t know it, she’s taught me a lot about everything from land spirits to love potions.

Do you have any pets?
Yes! Rodney, a formerly stray cat with a naughty streak and silky black fur of which he’s inordinately proud. We have the same star-shaped birthmark.

What town do you live in?
Wilfred, Oregon.

Do you live in a small town or a big city?
Wilfred is so small that it lost its incorporation as a city after the mill closed. The town is changing, though, thanks to a retreat center under construction on the old mill site.

Type of dwelling and do you own or rent?
My apartment is on the top floor of the Victorian mansion that houses Wilfred’s library, and it comes with my job. It was converted from the old servants’ quarters sometime during the Eisenhower administration. I love it here.

What is your favorite spot in your home?
Outside my living room, I can step into the hall and look over the banister, into the atrium, and see thousands of books in the mansion’s former bedrooms. It makes me so happy. Sun through the stained glass in the cupola casts jewel-toned light on the atrium floor, and the full-length portrait of Marilyn Wilfred, the library’s founder, smiles above the front entrance. Below me, books teem with adventure, romance, and enough real life stories to entertain and educate for a thousand life times.

Favorite meal and dessert?
Darla’s café serves an amazing platter of shrimp and grits, always with a Pacific Northwestern touch.

Do you have any hobbies?
Does reading count? I adore vintage crime novels, especially screwball mysteries from the 1930s and 1940s, and have read everything by Alice Tilton, Delano Ames, and Constance and Gwenyth Little.

What is your favorite vacation spot?
My imagination, for sure.

What music do you listen to?
I like to open my living room window and listen to the strains of Sam’s operas that drift across the garden separating the library from Big House.

Do you have a favorite book?
Now you’re trying to get me into trouble, Dru Ann. Books may seem indifferent to most people, but they’re really like children clamoring to be read and appreciated. If my library ever caught wind that I had a favorite book, I’d be in for it. So, I’m going to choose a tome none of them could compete with, my grandmother’s grimoire.

What is your idea of a really fun time?
It’s no surprise that I love to spend a few hours reading. Although I adore vintage crime novels, the book I most need or want to read at any moment has a habit of appearing on my nightstand. I like to take a book to the old velvet couch in my tiny living room and build a fire, if it’s winter, or, in summer, open the windows to the fragrance of the roses below and the cottonwoods along the river. Rodney is either snuggled next to me or snoozing in the empty kindling box.

If you were to write a memoir, what would you call it?
In Witch I Tell My Life’s Story

Amateur or professional sleuth and whom do you work with?
Amateur, for sure. I work solo, with the occasional assist from Rodney.

In a few sentences, what is a typical day in your life like?
If I have time, I take breakfast at Darla’s Café down the hill and tap into the local grapevine for updates on the retreat center, or about what oddball products Patty is featuring this month at the This-N-That, or the details of Duke’s latest handyman project. Then I return to the library and start coffee in the library’s huge back kitchen. I make my rounds, opening curtains and turning on lights and saying good morning to the books. Once the doors are open, I help patrons find the books they need, even if they didn’t know they needed them. For instance, Mrs. Garlington might come in for sheet music, but I’ll send her home with an article on fostering kittens. After work, I like to wander across the garden to Sam’s kitchen porch, where we talk about his cases from the sheriff’s department.

What is a typical day when you are on a case?
Here’s where my connection to books is vital. When I’m trying to solve a murder, I use books to illuminate a suspect’s character, give me advice, and even capture some of a suspect’s energy for me to read.

Seven-Year Witch, A Witch Way Librarian Mystery #2
Genre: Cozy
Release: August 2021
Purchase Link

Finding your feet in a new job isn’t always easy. That goes double for Josie Way, who’s settling in as Wilfred, Oregon’s, new librarian—and has just discovered she’s a witch. But will her fledgling powers be enough to save her from a spell of murder?

While Josie develops her witchcraft with the help of letters left by her grandmother, there are other changes happening in her new hometown. A retreat center is being built at the old mill site, and rumor has it that the location is cursed. That piques Josie’s interest almost as much as Sam Wilfred, handsome FBI agent and descendent of the town’s founder . . .

When Sam’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Fiona, goes missing at the same time that a bloodied weapon is found, Josie enlists her witchy insight, and her cat familiar, to clear Sam’s name. But then the mill project’s architect is found dead, and it’s clear that someone has been drawing up a vicious plan. Now Josie will have to divine her way out of fatal mischief, before this deadly trouble turns double . . .

About the author
Angela M. Sanders writes the Witch Way Librarian cozy mysteries and the Joanna Hayworth vintage clothing mysteries. When Angela isn’t at her laptop, she’s often rummaging in thrift shops, lounging with a vintage crime novel and her shelter cats Squeaky and Bitsy, or pontificating on how to make the perfect martini.

All comments are welcomed.