Spotlight & Giveaway: The Late-Night Witches by Auralee Wallace

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Auralee Wallace to HJ!

Hi Auralee and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Late-Night Witches!

Hello! Thank you so much for having me!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Late-Night Witches follows Cassie Beckett, a full-time mom and part-time hardware store employee, doing her best to raise her fifteen-year-old daughter and eight-year-old twin boys while her husband works overseas. For the most she has been staying on top of everything, that is until she discovers she’s a witch fated to duel a master vampire on Halloween. So now, with help from her disaster-prone little sister and an eccentric seaside aunt, Cassie has one month to master her magic and save her family, her neighborhood, all of PEI—and possibly the world.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“Cass, it’s time for you to witch up.”
“…you’re asking me to put my needs ahead of all of humanity’s.”
“For like five minutes.”

“It’s a hard thing to reveal who we truly are to ourselves, let alone the world. Everything could change, and even if the change is for the better, that doesn’t make it any less frightening.” Dorcas took her hand. “I know you have your doubts, but I can feel your power, Polliwog. It’s yours, and it’s vast, and it’s beautiful, but it won’t shine through unless you allow it to.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Inspiration: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fright Night, Supernatural, Good Girls, and truthfully, my own battle with breast cancer. Cancer is definitely my vampire.
• Working title: WITCHES VS. VAMPIRES (always in all-caps because drama).
• Research rabbit holes: PEI folklore, red-sand geology, graveyard dead houses, and ALL the ways to kill a vampire
• Writing playlist: Bad Moon Rising (CCR), Monster (Imagine Dragons), Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked (Cage the Elephant), and Season of the Witch (Lana Del Ray) – definitely, Season of the Witch, on repeat
• Book-inspired snacks: Malpeque oysters and PEI potato fudge—don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

What first draws Cassie to Ben is the way he cares for his baby niece. His sister wasn’t ready to be a mom, so he stepped in with almost no preparation. Having done most of the child-rearing in her own family, Cassie finds it incredibly endearing to see this professor—with a quarterback’s build—pacing his driveway at night wearing a leopard-print baby carrier, soothing a crying infant.
For Ben, it’s much the same. From the day he moved in, he’s watched Cassie manage her spirited brood of three with patience and calm determination. He hopes that one day he’ll be half the parent she is.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

When I was going through cancer treatment, everything felt impossible—especially in those early days when my diagnosis was uncertain. I had a really hard time just managing everyday life. How do you buy Christmas presents when you’re waiting on MRI results? Thankfully, a therapist helped me see things in a different light, and I wanted to weave a bit of her advice into this scene. It gets me every time, and I hope maybe it will help somebody else going through a tough time.

“I heard you when you said you can’t do this.” Ben scratched his temple. “But from where this lowly human is standing, I think you already are.”
Cassie tilted her head. “I don’t understand.”
He gazed at the sea, the house, the vampire dummy—that held him up a beat. “Everything you’re doing. The getting up every day. The trying. The failing. The facing literal demons. You’re already doing it. This is it.”
Out of all the things she had been expecting him to say, she hadn’t anticipated that. She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but it somehow felt big. “Thank you, Ben. For everything.”
He held his hand up, then stuffed it back in his pocket. Cassie watched him walk away, memorizing his every footfall over the moon-bright sand.

Readers should read this book….

•  They miss early-2000s snarky, paranormal stories with genuine heart.
• They want family dynamics, sisterhood, and a mom-heroine who kills vampires.
• They’re feeling knocked down and need a reminder that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

Right now, I’m knee-deep in a cozy fantasy set in a haunted seaside library where two librarians might just fall in love—if three super annoying ghosts don’t ruin everything first, that is. Look for that in 2026!
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of THE LATE-NIGHT WITCHES by Auralee Wallace for a U. S. only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you ever stared down what felt like impossible odds? How did you keep going? What “stake” (pun intended) kept you fighting?

 
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Excerpt from The Late-Night Witches:

A low growl rumbled by her ear. Cassie jolted, spilling her tea. “What the heck, cat?” She said it quietly though. Janet did sometimes growl at absolutely nothing-or ghosts, she couldn’t be sure-but there were other times when her feline friend picked up on real creatures going bump in the night. Cassie held her breath to listen and heard a grunt come from up the street. Her shoulders dropped. She knew that grunt. And she should have seen this coming.

It was Thursday. Karaoke night.

Cassie slipped her coin back into her pocket and swatted at the drops of tea on her cable-knit sweater, but her hand fell away when the willowy silhouette of a woman emerged from the fog. She was swaying, not unlike Gary, but that wasn’t what had Cassie concerned. She was also dragging something. Its metal tip scraped noisily along the pavement.

A baseball bat.

Janet jumped down from the chair and up onto the porch railing in a fluid motion. She gathered herself up into a tight perched position. Cassie considered throwing her granny square afghan over her head, but it was too late. The woman had already spotted her. “Hey you!” she shouted as though it wasn’t the middle of the night. “Just the person I wanted to see!”

Eliza, Cassie’s sister and in most ways her first child, was stunning. Her hair was long, black, and straight-as opposed to Cassie’s sandy waves that lived in a messy bun-and her eyes were large and dramatically dark. That being said, she looked a little rough tonight. The black tank dress wasn’t too bad-it showed off her sister’s slender arms and the bangles clustered at her wrists-but the work boots on her feet and the flannel shirt tied around her waist looked wrong. So did the scraped knee glaring angrily through her torn black tights.

“Go away,” Cassie said tiredly. “I don’t want what you’re selling.”

“Is that any way to welcome your sister home?”

Cassie pointed down the street. “You live that way.”

Eliza ambled halfway up the lawn before suddenly pitching forward in giant, awkward steps. When she caught herself, she frowned at the football lying innocently in the grass, then kicked it over to the property next door. One of her oversized boots tumbled after it.

“No. Go get that. Mrs. MacDonald is going to flip out.” Cassie didn’t talk to her neighbor all that much, but when they did speak, it was almost always about property lines. Mrs. MacDonald was big on property lines. She probably didn’t want the chaos of Cassie’s life spilling into hers.

“No time for that,” Eliza said. “You’re going to want to hear about what I’ve been up to. I promise it has a happy ending.”

Cassie did want to hear about what her sister had been up to-in the way she wanted to know about an outbreak of lice in the boys’ classroom-but she also didn’t want to encourage whatever this was. Besides, she didn’t need to ask Eliza where she had been. She knew the answer to that. And she didn’t have to ask her who she was with. Cassie knew that too. She certainly wasn’t going to ask her sister how much she’d had to drink. She didn’t want to know the answer to that. And she definitely wasn’t going to ask her-

“Why do you have a bat?” Frick.

“Great question. Wait. Why are you out here at-” Eliza looked at her wrist, making her bracelets jangle. She didn’t wear a watch. “Why are you out here?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Cassie looked pointedly at the bat. “Now you.”

Her sister groaned. “It’s a long story.”

“One you seemed eager to tell me a moment ago.”

“Yeah.” Eliza sighed. “But now that I’ve had time to think it over, I’ve realized I don’t come out particularly well in it.” She trailed off, distracted by the cat pinning her with a judgmental gaze. “You know what, Janet?” She challenged the cat with a glare, but couldn’t finish the thought.

“Eliza. Focus.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Against?”

“A two-thousand and nine Ford F-150.”

Cassie pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “No. Absolutely not. I want no part of this.” Destruction of property was not on her calendar. “Wait, was it parked or moving?” What was wrong with her? Why was she still asking questions?

“Parked. Definitely parked. But . . .” Eliza trailed off again, her eyes tracking a late moth fluttering up to the streetlamp.

Cassie snapped her fingers in the air. “Okay, start from the beginning.” She suspected she already knew the end.

“You want me to start from the beginning? I can tell you the whole story with one word.” She struggled to untie the flannel shirt fixed around her waist, then threw it to the ground. “It was Tommy. The asshat.”

“Hey!” Cassie shot a look up in the direction of her boys’ window.

“Oh shit.” Eliza slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

“You know what? Don’t start from the beginning. Just tell me one thing. Tell me you did not commit a Carrie Underwood on his truck.”

Eliza opened her mouth then shut it again before squinting and chewing her thumbnail. Cassie imagined she was mulling her strategy. A moment passed and Eliza flung her hand away. “Of course I committed a Carrie Underwood on his truck! Well, half an Underwood. Have you ever tried to beat up a truck? It’s harder than it looks. I may have dislocated my shoulder.”

Thoughts of damage, insurance, and possible legal action swirled through Cassie’s mind.

Excerpted from The Late-Night Witches by Auralee Wallace Copyright © 2025 by Auralee Wallace. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

An enchantingly warm and funny novel about family, love lost and found, discovering who you are, and how difficult it is to slay a vampire from the beloved national bestselling author of the TikTok sensation In the Company of Witches.

Cassie Beckett’s life is anything but magical. With a wild younger sister, three unruly kids, and an absent husband, she’s really not looking forward to the witching month of October. At least the gorgeous, foggy Prince Edward Island is always quiet.

That is, until the vampires arrive.

As the creatures sink their teeth into Cassie’s tenuous grip on normalcy, she’s forced to come face-to-face with long–disregarded family secrets. The legacy gifts her with power, but also a lofty responsibility: rid the island of vampires, or let them win. (Both options suck, in more ways than one.)

Armed with her family, newfound friends, and a baby in a spectacularly garlicky onesie, Cassie must learn what it is to be a witch and how to fight for what she loves before time runs out. Because on Halloween night, the stakes will be higher than ever before…and it’s up to Cassie to finish what the witches that came generations before her started.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Auralee Wallace is the author of multiple novels, including the Otter Lake mystery series and the Evenfall Witches B&B Mysteries. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s degree in English literature, and she worked in the publishing industry for a number of years before teaching at the college level. When this perpetually sleep-deprived mother of three children and one rescue cat isn’t writing, reading, or playing soccer, she can be found watching BBC mysteries and warring with a family of peregrine falcons for the rights to her backyard.