There are stories you write because they’ve been living inside you.
And then there are stories that sneak in when the world shuts down and says, Now what?
The Ordinary Bruja was the latter.
Born not from a place of inspiration—but isolation.
From the grief-laced silence of lockdown. From the heavy stillness that filled every room during those early months of COVID. From the deep need to escape, even if only into fiction.
Quarantine, Cold, and Creative Survival
At the time, I didn’t set out to write anything heavy.
I wanted to write something fun. Something magical. Something that could offer readers (and me) a break from the relentless trauma we were witnessing daily. But the truth is, when you’re sitting inside four walls with nowhere to go and too much time to think, the story that bubbles up is rarely light.
Instead, what came through was Marisol Espinal—a young woman suffocating under the weight of inherited silence. A bruja who didn’t know she was one, stuck in her own kind of quarantine from her identity, her power, and her past.
It was supposed to be a cozy fantasy.
It became a reckoning.
Writing Through the Grief
Every day, I’d write between doomscrolling, homeschooling, and trying to pretend things were okay. But they weren’t. Not in the world, not in my house, and not inside of me. So I did what I always do when I can’t fix things: I wrote through it.
And that’s when the story started to sharpen.
The coldness Marisol feels at the start of the novel? That was my own.
The isolation in her haunted ancestral home? That was me, in mine.
The slow realization that something unseen but very real is feeding on your fear and insecurity? That was all of us, watching the death toll rise and wondering if we’d ever be the same.
But the turning point for her—and for me—was this:
The only way out is through.
Why The Ordinary Bruja Became the Book It Did
Lockdown didn’t just give me the time to write—it gave me the emotional depth to write something true. Not autobiographical, but spiritually honest. Every choice Marisol makes, every doubt she wrestles with, is rooted in that feeling of being trapped by something bigger than yourself. And the eventual decision to fight anyway.
It’s a book about ghosts, yes.
But it’s also about the ghosts we carry inside us.
A Book for the Ones Who Felt Everything
The Ordinary Bruja is for the people who felt the weight of those early pandemic months in their bones.
Who grieved people they didn’t know.
Who wrestled with their identity while the world asked them to stay still.
Who tried to create joy while everything was falling apart.
It started as an escape.
It ended up a reflection.
And now, it’s a reminder:
Even in isolation, even in grief, even in silence—you are still becoming.
Want to know how it all turns out? Preorder The Ordinary Bruja
The Ordinary Bruja: Book One of Las Cerradoras Series – Johanny Ortega
Marisol Espinal has spent her life trying to disappear from her family’s whispers of magic, from the shame of not belonging, from the truth she refuses to face. She’s always wanted to be someone else: confident, capable, extraordinary.
But when strange visions, flickering shadows, and warnings written in her mother’s hand begin to stalk her, Marisol is forced to confront her deepest fear: what if she isn’t extraordinary at all? What if she’s painfully ordinary?
Yet Hallowthorn Hill doesn’t call to just anyone. And the more Marisol resists, the stronger its pull becomes. The past she’s buried claws its way back, and something in the mist is watching—waiting for her to remember.
If Marisol cannot face the truth about who she is and where she comes from, the same darkness that destroyed her ancestors will claim her, too.
Somewhere in the shadows, something knows her name.
And it’s time for Marisol to learn why.
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