Interview with Laura Bickle & Giveaway!

EMBERS by Laura Bickle

Unemployment, despair, anger--visible and invisible unrest feed the undercurrent of Detroit's unease. A city increasingly invaded by phantoms now faces a malevolent force that further stokes fear and chaos throughout the city.

Anya Kalinczyk spends her days as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department, and her nights pursuing malicious spirits with a team of eccentric ghost hunters. Anya--who is the rarest type of psychic medium, a Lantern--suspects a supernatural arsonist is setting blazes to summon a fiery ancient entity that will leave the city in cinders. By Devil's Night, the spell will be complete, unless Anya--with the help of her salamander familiar and the paranormal investigating team --can stop it.

Anya's accustomed to danger and believes herself inured to loneliness and loss. But this time she's risking everything: her city, her soul, and a man who sees and accepts her for everything she is. Keeping all three safe will be the biggest challenge she's ever faced.

REVIEW

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Please join me in welcoming Laura Bickle to Lovin' Me Some Romance!

My Interview:

Thanks so much for having me!

1. EMBERS showcases a very compelling and impressive cover. One that excels at portraying what the reader can expect to find beneath it. What was your initial reaction when you saw the cover for the first time? What is your favorite aspect? How involved were you with its design?

Thank you! The cover artist is Chris McGrath, who does the covers for Jim Butcher’s DRESDEN books. More of his art is here: www.christianmcgrath.com. He’s also doing the cover for the EMBERS sequel, SPARKS . A sneak peek at the SPARKS cover is here: http://juno-books.com/blog/?p=913

I didn’t offer any input for the cover, really. I was beyond thrilled to see it when I got the initial image in my inbox. I couldn’t have asked for a better cover – it really captures Anya. She’s depicted as being serious, dark and fiery – the whole image is just lovely. It’s a very nontraditional cover for this genre - both of them are – and I adore them.

2. The introduction to the paranormal world of EMBERS is immediate. The crumbling facade of Detroit , Anya's familiar - Sparky, and the Earthbound inhabitants that Anya deals with day-to-day are conveyed quickly via adventure and intrigue. How important was it for you to immerse the reader immediately into Anya's world? Do you feel strongly that the first chapter opening to a novel can be make or break in terms of capturing the reader's attention?

I agree that the first chapter is critically important. This is my chance to introduce the protagonist, her conflicts, and the environment surrounding her. In the first chapter of EMBERS, the reader follows Anya into a ghost-hunting expedition that does not go as Anya anticipated. I think that it was important to show the reader how ambivalent Anya feels about her role in that team, how much of an outsider she’s become. As a Lantern and destroyer of spirits, she’s called upon to do ugly things that no one else will – or can – do. And it wears on her.

3. Anya's paranormal powers as a Lantern is a topic of extreme fascination for me. I think I'm most struck by the uniqueness of her abilities as well as impressed with the emotional toll and the use of it with Anya's character development, as well as the fact that she applies a set of morals to herself with regards to these abilities. Where most paranormal heroines' powers deal primarily in the physical, Anya's is extremely psychological in that she's taking lives regardless of the fact that the lives she consumes are only Earthbound spirits. It humanized her quickly for me and I tuned into her struggles with complete believability. While I know that this is generally a question author's despise, I'm sorry but I gotta ask it: What was the inspiration for Anya, her abilities, and how you deftly filed them under the term Lantern? Can you also describe for those that are in the dark, what a Lantern is? And finally, why the profession as a firefighter?

It’a a good question – not to be despised at all!

Anya is the rarest form of psychic medium, a Lantern. Where other mediums allow spirits to borrow their own hands and voices to communicate, Anya can draw these spirits into her body and incinerate them. In that sense, she’s like a human bug zapper. But it’s a very intimate and upsetting process for Anya, one that leaves her with physical and emotional scars for a long time afterward.

The theme of fire – inner and outer – is the touchstone for my inspiration for EMBERS. Fire destroys irretrievably, and Anya has to come to terms with some of those emotions. Since Anya has a fire salamander familiar, and the story is set in Detroit , a city that has a fiery past, it seemed only natural to make her an arson investigator.

More than that, I wanted Anya to have a real, believable job. While her nights keep her occupied as a Lantern and ghost hunter, I wanted her to have to wake up in the morning, beat the alarm clock into submission, find something appropriate to wear, and fight traffic to get a paycheck like everyone else.

4. Sparky, Anya's fire elemental familiar, provides much needed comic relief. For an unseeing salamander, he stole my heart with lightening speed with his silly antics, endearing personality, and his unabashed loyalty and love for Anya. He's necessary, I think, for if he didn't existence, Anya's loneliness would have been beyond unbearable and she'd likely be a different person. Did he evolve because of Anya's need for at least one being that she could entrust her heart to or did he come fully formed with Anya as a character? Was he as much of a relief for you to write amongst the seriousness of your tale as he was for me to read?

I knew that I wanted Anya to have a constant companion from the very beginning. Though she has her feet in two worlds, she doesn’t belong in either one. It was important for me to give her an emotional touchstone, to allow her to give and receive unconditional love. This doesn’t happen with the men in her life - and very few of us have relationships with people where that’s always the case, if we’re really honest with ourselves.

No matter what happens, no matter what bad decisions she makes or what guilt she feels, Sparky will be there for her. He’s always been with her, and he always will be. I wanted Anya to have that bit of comfort. When I think of Anya and Sparky, the image that always comes to mind is Anya staring up at the ceiling at night with Sparky draped over her feet. Sparky’s hogging the covers, snoring, and he’s cuddling his Glo-Worm.

There’s a lot to be said for the unconditional love of a pet.

5. Ghosts are nothing new, however, I'm completely surprised at how the whole plot concept caught me refreshingly off guard. My rational is that in today's market, vampires, shapeshifters, and magic users dominate leaving ghosts as a trend of the past. What motivated you to abandon the tried and true for ghosts? Are you a believer in their existence? If so, why do you think they're trapped here?

With EMBERS, I set out to do something deliberately different and out of the box. Ghosts have always been in our cultural mythology, and I don’t think that they’re going away anytime soon. Membership in ghost hunting societies has skyrocketed in recent years, suggesting that there’s a resurgence in curiosity about what’s knocking about in grandma’s basement.

I think that ghosts are certainly possible, but I don’t have any hard evidence to back that up. I think that, if they do exist, that they represent a hiccup or glitch in the natural process of returning to the source of life or universal energy. Sort of like tide pools. When the tide pulls back, most of the water returns to the sea. But some of the water is left behind in pools, trapped by the landscape. Some of it eventually trickles back to the sea at a later time, but some of it gets brackish and stagnant. And that’s where the interesting stuff lies, I think.

6. While reading about a city that I've never visited, I was struck at how quickly I championed its survival. This is obviously due to Anya's love for the Detroit but what I really want to know and understand is your love for it. Or is it not love at all but just a fascination with architecture? Why did you incorporate Detroit so thoroughly into the novel to the point that you basically gave it a distinct life as a character amongst all your other characters?

My husband is to blame for all things Detroit in the book. He’s originally from Detroit , and still has family there. He played tour guide for me while I wrote EMBERS and SPARKS , showing me all kinds of unique and forgotten places. Though I never lived there, I grew to love it, too. It’s a city that truly has an indomitable spirit. What was originally intended as a simple setting really morphed into a character that spilled over all the pages.

7. SPARKS , book two in the Anya Kalinczyk series, comes out in August. What can we expect in terms of Anya's adventures? Will there be more discoveries with regards to her powers?

In SPARKS , Anya’s investigating a rash of spontaneous human combustion cases. With the help of the ghost hunters and a soul collector from the Underworld, she must track down the supernatural source of the fires and keep Sparky’s newly-hatched newts safe from a malicious psychic.

In doing so, Anya’s going to make some discoveries about what her role is as an avatar of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and who her father is. She’ll gather some more insight on why Sparky chose her as a protector. And she’ll also get some additional assignments from the Assistant Regional Manager of the Underworld, a guy named Charon who knows his way around the river Styx .

8. And finally, you also have another Urban Fantasy novel, DARK ORACLE, that just released May 25th under the name Alayna Williams. Why the different name and what is this new series about?

Same genre, and the release dates were close together – hence the use of a different name! DARK ORACLE has a slightly different tone – it’s a mashup of magic and science that should appeal to fans of the X-Files and Fringe.

Tara Sheridan swore off criminal profiling after narrowly escaping a serial killer who left her scarred for life. By combining Tarot card divination with her own intuition, she must help an intense federal agent find a missing scientist who has unlocked the destructive secrets of dark energy. The agent, Harry Li, draws her out of her self-imposed exile and back into the world. DARK ORACLE was released May 25. More info on the ORACLE series is here: www.alaynawilliams.com

Thanks so much for the interview! I enjoyed chatting with you.

Laura

Giveaway Details:

Thanks to Simon & Schuster Publishing, I have 10 copies of EMBERS to giveaway! Here's how to enter:

*Leave a Comment with Current Email Address*

**Contest Open to U.S. ONLY**

***Must be 18 or Older to Enter***

****Contest Closes Thursday, June 3rd at Midnight U.S. Pacific Standard Time and Winners will be Chosen Randomly and Announced Friday, June 4th****