Today, I'm thrilled to have Laura Bickle here. I had the chance to
ask her some questions about her latest urban fantasy releases, involving the
exciting adventures of Anya and her side-kick familiar, Sparky the fire
salamander.
Having
lived in the Toledo area for decades and avoiding downtown Detroit like the
plague, I can see how that setting works especially well to host a population
of malicious phantoms. Was it hard to flip the coin and show some light and
hope for your heroine, Anya, in such a depressed area, ravaged by hard economic
times?
Detroit has some very magical places
that are easily reimagined into landscapes for a book. And the Detroit Salt
Mine, which stretches beneath the city. It became the perfect place for a
dragon's lair. Michigan Central Station became a way station for ghosts moving
into the afterlife.
I want readers to know that there is
incredible beauty, power, and magic in the city. Everywhere I looked, I found a
story. There's so much history - from speakeasies to the churches - and I
wanted to explore that for the reader.
How
do you use Sparky, Anya’s salamander familiar, to show some humor and softer
sides of your heroine? Is Sparky’s life ever at risk during Anya’s battles in
the series?
My favorite character is, hands down,
Sparky the fire salamander. There's a scene in which Anya has crawled into bed
and is fretting about her investigation. Sparky ignores the dog bed she's
purchased for him, crawls into bed, and snuggles up with Anya and his Glow-Worm
toy. He reminds me a lot of unconditional love...as people, we can fail and
make wrong choices. But I wanted Anya to have a sense of that unconditional
love, even when she screws up.
Sparky is Anya's protector, and he is
the first one to fling himself into a fight with the Unseen. He's particularly
vulnerable in SPARKS, when he's guarding a nest of baby newts he's raising in
Anya's bathtub.
In
Embers, a supernatural arsonist sets blazes to summon a fiery ancient
entity, intending to leave the city in cinders. Does the ancient entity truly
exist in the story and make threatening appearances? What real damage happens
as a small sample of what may come if Anya cannot stop the arsonist?
The arsonist is
attempting to raise Sirrush, who is hibernating in the salt mine beneath the
city. Sirrush is a fearsome dragon who's the granddaddy of all salamanders. He
dates back to Babylonian times. When Sirrush wakes up, he's cranky. Very
cranky. And he turns anything he can see into toast. So our heroes have to try
to stop him, or stand back and toast marshmallows while the city burns.
How
does this situation in Embers threaten the life of the man Anya loves?
Anya’s got love in her life, many
kinds…but, as for so many of us in real life, there’s no one person that can be
her everything. Anya is a fire investigator by day. By night, she works with an
eccentric group of ghost-hunters, chasing down malicious spirits. She’s the
rarest kind of medium, a Lantern – where other mediums can communicate with
spirits, she devours them. She’s an outsider among outsiders. She’s got one
foot in the material world, and one foot outside of it.
Brian, the ghost-hunters' tech guru,
is ordinary. He has no special powers, no ability to see into the darkness
beyond what his instruments show him. And Anya loves him because he’s ordinary.
He’s a touchstone into the solid, physical world. He’s human.
But Anya, like all the rest of us,
wants to be understood. She wants someone to see the darkness in her, and tell
her that she’s not a monster. That’s why she falls for Drake, the serial
arsonist. He’s the only other Lantern she’s ever met. He understands who and
what she is. She doesn’t need to hide or pretend around him. Only problem is…he’s
using his power to awaken an ancient power that threatens to raze Detroit on
Devil’s night. Drake’s lost touch with his humanity, which is the thing she
loves most about Brian.
In
Sparks, how does Anya’s struggle with Hope Soloman threaten Anya’s
relationship with her lover?
Anya has confessed her feelings to
Brian, but she is learning things about him that she wishes that she didn't -
including a willingness to circumvent the rules and a disregard for the Unseen.
While Anya struggles with what being a Lantern means and wonders what happens
with ghosts after she devours them, Brian is entirely unconcerned with their
welfare in the afterlife. Anya is willing to go to the Underworld to rescue
souls enslaved by a malicious psychic, Hope Solomon, and Brian tries to stop
her any way he can.
Thanks so much for hosting me today!
EMBERS
Anya Kalinczyk #1
Pocket Juno Books
Mass Market Paperback,
$7.99
ISBN: 978-1439167656
April 2010
“One of the most
promising debut novels I’ve read in a great while… I’d highly recommend this
book to anybody who reads fantasy. It reminds me in many regards…of another
exceptional first novel…Emma Bull’s seminal War for the Oaks, and there’s not
much higher praise that I can give.”
—Elizabeth Bear on Tor.com
“Bickle has something
great in Anya. Embers has everything: demons, ghosts, dragons, love, sex,
police, and murder.”
—M.L.N. Hanover, bestselling author of Darker Angels
“Gritty but never grim,
Embers is a truly urban fantasy, where the soul of a city haunts every page. I
can’t wait for more of Anya and the unforgettable Sparky!”
—Jeri Smith-Ready, award-winning author of Bad to the Bone and Shade
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.
Read an excerpt at http://books.simonandschuster.com/Embers/Laura-Bickle/9781439167656/excerpt
Anya Kalinczyk #2
Pocket Juno Books
Mass Market Paperback,
$7.99
ISBN 978-1439167687
September 2010
The second book in
Bickle’s series about Anya Kalinczyk is just as wonderful as the first—Anya is
a compelling and likable protagonist and Bickle does an outstanding job in her
portrayal of the city of Detroit; there are ruins, yes, but also hope in the
ashes. Anya never takes herself too seriously and there is a scene in a baby
supercenter that is absolutely not to be missed. (4 stars)
- RT Book Reviews
...a charming and
inventive read.
-Elizabeth Bear, Realms of Fantasy Magazine, December 2010
WITHOUT A TRACE...
Anya Kalinczyk is the rarest type of psychic medium, a Lantern,
who holds down a day job as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire
Department—while working 24/7 to exterminate malicious spirits haunting a city
plagued by unemployment and despair. Along with her inseparable salamander
familiar, Sparky, Anya has seen, and even survived, all manner of fiery
hell—but her newest case sparks suspicions of a bizarre phenomenon that no one
but her eccentric team of ghost hunters might believe: spontaneous human
combustion.
After fire consumes the
home of elderly Jasper Bernard, Anya is stunned to discover his remains—or,
more precisely, a lack of them; even the fiercest fires leave some trace of
their victims—and she is sure this was no naturally occurring blaze. Soon she’s
unearthed a connection to a celebrity psychic who preys on Detroit’s poor,
promising miracles for money. But Hope Solomon wants more—she’s collecting
spirits, and in a frantic race against time, Anya will face down an evil
adversary who threatens her fragile relationship with her lover, her beloved
Sparky’s freshly hatched newts, and the wandering souls of the entire city.
Read an excerpt at http://books.simonandschuster.com/Sparks/Laura-Bickle/9781439167687/excerpt
Laura
Bickle has
an MA in sociology-criminology (research interests: fear of crime and
victimology) and a BA in criminology. She has worked in and around criminal
justice since 1997. Although she does read Tarot cards, she's never used them
in criminal profiling or to locate lost scientists. She recently took up
astronomy, but for the most part her primary role in studying constellations
and dark matter is to follow her amateur astronomer-husband around central Ohio
toting the telescope tripod and various lenses.
Writing
as Laura Bickle, she's the author of EMBERS and SPARKS for Pocket - Juno Books.
Writing as Alayna Williams, she's the author of DARK ORACLE and ROGUE ORACLE.
More
info on her urban fantasy and general nerdiness is here: http://www.salamanderstales.com/
Laura/
Alayna’s blogs
She’s
also at Facebook.
3 comments:
Thanks so much for hosting me today! I really appreciate it. :-)
Another addition to my TBR! Great interview :)
BK, it was a great interview--Laura gave good answers.
Glad to have you visit, Laura.
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