It’s been a minute since I finished writing the Santa Cruz Witch Academy series (although I’m getting ready to publish them wide after their exclusive run in Kindle Unlimited finishes next month). But I realized that I still had more content to share with you about the series: my mood boards!

I’ve shown these during private Facebook events, like the launch party for the third book, but never posted them publicly before. So if you want to see some photos that I used to help inspire my writing, check them out below. I also added a fun game that you can play.

This is a graphic that I made to represent the school, using the school colors and the logo from the book covers.

Here is the mood board for the main character, Brie. If you’ve already read the books, then you know that she loves art, notebooks, and surfing. The dorm building photo in the lower-left corner is actually from UC Santa Cruz. The fictional witch school, particularly the dorms, is based on the UC Santa Cruz campus. Sorry the photo is blurry, but it came from a disposable camera in 1997.

Damian is Brie’s best friend. While Brie is a little shy about everything, including telling people that she’s a lesbian, Damian is out and proud as genderfluid and pansexual. He loves dancing, dressing up, and watching romantic comedies. And yes, although he’s Jewish, he also loves the romantic Christmas movies on Hallmark.

Brie’s biggest rival is her roommate, Samantha, the most popular girl in school. She’s rich, fashionable, and pretty, but she has a mean streak. She clashes with Brie but she has her own secrets.

Every student in SCWA gets assigned to an element for the primary area of study. The process is complicated, but for fun, you could imagine which element you might get assigned based on your astrological sign. Then you can look at the list above to find out what types of witchcraft you could study at the academy.

Note: not everyone gets assigned to the element that they want. It’s not fair, but the faculty have their reasons for how they assign classes. Brie wasn’t happy with her assignment, but the classes that she have a major impact on her.

I hoped you enjoy this visual journey of my series. Stay tuned for more information when all three books are available wide!