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"It's being a really great tour", said author Begoña Echeverria to EuskalKultura.com, regarding the extensive book presenting tour of her first novel 'The Hammer of Witches'. After a brief stop to recover from the visit to Australia, Echeverria will continue with the presentations.

Chino, CA USA. California, Washington D.C., New York, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Sydney (Australia)… and the list continues. Begoña Echeverria is, literally, traversing the US –and beyond− with her first novel, The Hammer of Witches. The tour is giving her an “interesting” feedback from the readers, in her own words, and is also being praised by reviews, like the one by the UK’s Historical Novel Society.

“(The tour) has been really great. I’ve enjoyed sharing my story at all the venues. The questions and comments differ every time so that keeps me on my toes,” explained the writer and professor. In some of the presentations, like in Ontario, Oregon and Denver, Colorado, the audiences had read the book before her arrival, allowing them to make “an extra level of question,” as she put it. “The feedback from the audience is always interesting –said she−. But when people have read the novel first, (they) want to know how I came up with the characters or why I made them do certain things, why I used this image or what that poem meant.”

Echeverria admitted that she learns “a lot” when readers interpret the novel in different ways. “This is especially true for the poetry, songs and legends that I included to give readers a sense of what it was like to live in that time and place.  While I, or my characters, make sense of them in particular ways, it’s interesting to me to hear how contemporary readers understand them, in light of their own experiences and backgrounds.”

Noka and ‘The Hammer’ together

This tour is the first one for Echeverria as a writer, although she has been on the road many times before, with her music trio Noka. She told this bulletin that she would “love” to combine a Noka and a Hammer tour in the future: “Do a reading of The Hammer and perform with Noka.” “And it just so happens that Noka knows some songs about witches . . .,” added she, keeping the doors open to that possibility.