of

Exploring the

Witching

**B*TCHCRAFT**

World

Click to enlarge.

COMING SEPT 2ND, 2025

=

🌙

Teterboro Airport
Hell Gate Bridge
111 Central Park North
First Housecall
Superbowl Sunday
Park Avenue Armory
PH1
The TribeCa Loft
Pier 92
As Above

The Interview
Clark's
The Tower
Astoria Coffee Shoppe
Bette's
Northlight
So Below
Coney Island
Patricia's
Queensboro Bridge
Bayridge, Brooklyn

The Interview--C Café of C Hotel

Pier 92

Astoria Blue

In traditional witchcraft, it’s customary to bestow secondary or even secret names to yourself and your home. If Clark Crane has a secret name (read Book One to find out what it is), then it only made sense that his hand-me-down Astoria studio apartment—the heart of his inner world in Book One—deserved a second name, too.

I’ve lived on and off in Astoria for most of my life, but in 2021 I found my own “Astoria Blue.” From the moment I saw the listing, I knew this would be the place I'd write The Witch’s Assistant.

Like Clark’s, my apartment sits off the heart of the neighborhood, 30th Avenue. My north-facing windows look out over storybook rooftops and wide-open sky. It’s filled with sunlight, plants, and the “papier-mâché walls” are coated in thick inches of paint, layered over a hundred years of history and all the stories they’d tell—if only they could talk.

There’s even the RFK Bridge in the distance, its red-blinking tower eyes watching over Astoria, feeling so Gatsby and oh so romantic (a reference I make in Book One to no end). There’s Broadway two avenues down—the setting of that scene at the end under the train tracks—and all those many, many Astoria alleyways…

Oh, sure, I (like most writers) pull from personal mythology, even in fantasy storytelling (especially in fantasy). There is one big, marked difference, however, when it comes to Clark’s home:

There is no wall dividing the main space from the bathroom.

For Clark, I knew I wanted to dogwhistle to a time gone by in, say, working-class, urban storytelling like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where there’s a sense of a single space shared by an entire family, one with almost little to no privacy. Certainly, that way of living is still maintained to this day (and, here in Astoria, Queens, with its immigrant and working-to-middle-class history, it probably lives next door).

When that special someone comes along, I’m sure Clark at least puts up a room divider (I hope)!

To this end, I was more so inspired by a friend’s “nostalgic” Lower East Side apartment in college: a basement studio room with a bed, a toilet, and a clawfoot tub exposed, standing next to the kitchen sink where her toothbrush had a permanent spot, all barely updated for who knows how long. The place was as cheap as chips—and it looked like it (lol). So when Clark inherits his grandmother’s apartment after a major life shift, it’s a detail I knew I wanted to borrow.

The story even implies that Clark was raised here by his grandmother while his parents worked, not uncommon for New Yorkers I know. With a story like Clark’s, so long as the rent’s paid and no one complains, some landlords may even turn a kind, blind eye… I figured that the most cosmetic attention the space has seen in years is a coat of paint here and there.

I could've written the apartment as paid for by his grandmother—as was customary for her generation, at a time when buying a place in Astoria was more accessible—but then I imagined myself in Clark’s shoes. He wouldn’t have the same financial pressure, and that deeply-necessary contrast between his and Charisma’s worlds.

Plus, would this even be a New York City story worth telling, one about navigating the broken promise of the American Dream, if I didn’t make Clark toil just a little harder? I think not.

Maybe, in the next edition, I can omit the layers of white paint altogether. That way, Astoria Blue is even more of a time capsule of his grandmother’s, peeking through his own imprint on the space.

The Tower

“(3:03 a.m. unknown number): 2 W 57th Street. 7:00 a.m. Be on time. —Monica, Chapter 1

A fictious "covenstead" (a gathering place for a coven) located on Billionaire's Row at 2 W 57th Street, the Tower is Charisma's penthouse air-mansion's other name.

"The CLoset," here instead of a fashion house's stock of clothes, it's Charisma's storage room to witcheries and supplies for their spellwork and housecalls. Then, there is the Tower's ceremony space, a "glass ceiling," floor-t0-"glass ceiling" windowed upper-most floor, where one if sure to find a

"ocular" inner eye

Astoria Coffee Shoppe

Inspired by Westlight at the William Vale, Jupiter, Nubeluz, Overstory. Art Deco. Mid-Century Modern.

“North light is sunlight coming through a north-facing window. Because it does not come directly from the sun, it remains at a consistent angle and colour throughout the day and does not create sharp shadows.”

Bette's Apartment

Yes, that Bette. While she no longer lives in this apartment, I was happy to make this homage as close to reality as possible.

Click here to explore inside the penthouse apartment.

So Below

Patricia's

222-17 46th Avenue, Bayside, Queens
Patricia lives in a big, family home. In my mind, it has a white picket fence, and Patricia's Live Laugh Love plaques and tchotchkes. This one I'll got some wooded areas, and is next to Oakland Lake. Kinda witchy, to live at the edge of the woods, don't you think?