Laura Bickle Blog Tour
EMBERS
Anya Kalinczyk #1
Pocket Juno Books
Mass Market Paperback, $7.99
ISBN: 978-1439167656
April 2010
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.
SPARKS
Anya Kalinczyk #2
Pocket Juno Books
Mass Market Paperback, $7.99
ISBN 978-1439167687
September 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.
Guest Post - - Laura Bickle
Familiar Spirits
by Laura Bickle
By day, Anya Kalinczyk is an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department. By night, she chases restless spirits with a motley group of ghost hunters. Her faithful familiar is a salamander, Sparky, a fire elemental who takes the shape of a five-foot-long speckled hellbender. Sparky can't speak, but he has learned to type, and he's been corralled to talk to readers today for the first time about his history as a familiar in the world of EMBERS and SPARKS:
First thing I want you all to understand: Nobody ever controls a familiar.
Yeah, yeah, - I know the schtick. Every witch and wizard who's ever existed thinks they can call up a familiar to do their bidding. Sometimes, they think they can bind us to bits of jewelry or idols, like genies in bottles. Other times, they think we're willing servitors, running magical errands hither and yon, fetching and carrying just for giggles.
As if.
The truth is a lot stranger than those little fictions humanity has believed for thousands of years. The German magician, Paracelsus, called fire spirits "salamanders" in the sixteenth century. Salamanders were long associated with fire, despite our amphibious nature, because they crawled out of forest logs cast on fires. The salamander was assumed to dwell in fire, and embodied the impetuosity, power, and destructive changeability of the flickering flame.
And he got the whole thing started. Paracelsus was pretty much a poser. Didn't accomplish too much of that turning base metals into gold, except when I helped him. And then, well...his head got huuuge. I finally got annoyed with him, took off, and heard that he died of a really bad foot fungus. Heh.
Paracelsus wasn't the only guy who tried to control me. I spent some time hanging out with Van Helsing when he was a young man. Vampires don't care much for fire, and we had some excellent fun in Eastern Europe. Vamps tend to go up like burned marshmallows. Good times, those.
But I really enjoy working with the ladies.
Joan of Arc was one of my favorites. I whispered in her ear for years. She had a terribly tragic end - tried to save her. Sigh.
But there were some good things that were born in those fires that killed her...more salamanders. Newts. Dozens of 'em. I chose Joan because she had a certain power. The world had really worn her down, truth be told. She wasn't as naive and hopeful as history would lead you to believe. But she reached down and found a strength within her to change the future.
And I see a lot of that in my new keeper, Anya. She's different from Joan. She's what they call a Lantern - the rarest kind of spiritual medium. Where other mediums allow spirits to use their hands and voices to communicate, Anya devours them. It's a terrible power, one that she hates. A lonely one.
But it's a necessary power. One that the world needs. And as long as she wields it, I'll stick with her. So she knows something of love. Even if it's just from an elemental spirit.
Even if it's from one she can't control. She’ll get used to it – they all do.
Laura Bickle (a.k.a Alayna Williams) has worked in libraries, criminology, and technology for several years. She lives in the Midwestern U.S. with her chief muse, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats. 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: www.salamanderstales.com
An excerpt from EMBERS is available here: http://juno-books.com/embers-excerpt.html
