PSF Interview & Giveaway: Alayna Williams “Dark Oracle”

**Visit Tynga’s Reviews today for her PSF post with cover artist Tony Mauro**

My guest today is Alayna Williams author of DARK ORACLE, “first in a series of urban fantasy novels from Pocket-Juno books. The books detail the adventures of Tara, a modern-day oracle who uses Tarot cards to solve crimes.”  If Alayna looks familiar that’s because she also writes under the name Laura Bickle (Embers). DARK ORACLE is her first book as Alayna & thanks to her publisher, two of you will win a copy. Details below.

Alayna Williams 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. Like the Pythia in Dark Oracle, she's been known to belly dance. Unlike the Pythia she'd never consider herself a professional.

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Interview

ATUF: You also write urban fantasy under the name Laura Bickle (Embers). How are the two different?

AW: Same genre, and the release dates were close together – hence the use of a different name! Both my series have different concepts and tones. My publisher thought that it would be less confusing to readers to keep the series under two different names.

I wrote EMBERS as Laura Bickle.

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 an ancient entity that will burn the city to cinders. By Devil’s Night, the spell will be complete, unless Anya—with the help of the ghost hunters and her fire salamander familiar, Sparky—can stop it.

DARK ORACLE has a slightly different tone, and was released under my Alayna Williams pseudonym.

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.

ATUF: Like your main character Tara, you've worked in the area of criminology. Did your background help in creating realism for Tara?

AW: I’ve worked in and around criminal justice for the past twelve years. I tried to keep the aspects of Tara’s investigation as realistic as possible by keeping in mind that investigations are not solved overnight, and that they are a process of piecing together evidence over a period of time.
With both Tara and Anya, my goal was to show that these characters have jobs that they take very seriously. Any type of investigative work requires an exercise of logic and brainpower more than brawn. They aren’t the kinds of heroines who kick in doors with guns blazing. They have strategies.

ATUF: What can you tell us about Delphi’s Daughters?

AW: The Delphic Oracle is probably the most famous oracle of the ancient world, and Delphi’s Daughters are the intellectual descendents of those women in the DARK ORACLE world. I was intrigued by the idea of an order of women exerting subtle and powerful influence over the ancient world. I wondered what would happen if that order of priestesses went underground and survived to the modern day. What would their role in world events be?
In DARK ORACLE, the title of Pythia is handed down through generations of women, all oracles with their own unique talent for foreseeing the future. Delphi’s Daughters are a secret organization, nudging world events and gathering information through vast networks of helpers. Their behavior is sometimes sinister, sometimes pure, but always secretive. No one but the Pythia herself knows how the puzzle of world events fits together, and her priestesses are often left in the dark, guessing at her motives.

ATUF: Did you have an interest in Greek mythology before writing DARK ORACLE?

AW: Yes, I’ve always been a huuuuge mythology nerd. That goes back to my childhood. My mother was a school librarian, and I spent plenty of afternoons curled up in the mythology section of the library.
I’m fascinated by how the Greeks made sense of their world. While busily building cities and plowing fields, they’d occasionally dig up a dinosaur bone. They created amazing legends around what they supposed those bones belonged to, gods and monsters. In their own way, they created a world around what they found.

ATUF: Tara uses Tarot cards in addition to her scientific training in her job. Was it difficult to blend the two?

AW: I really enjoyed doing the mashup of science and magic, including dark matter in particle accelerators and divination by ancient oracles. I was a fan of the X-Files, and I wanted to recreate some of that sense of wonder in the seen and unseen.

ATUF: If DARK ORACLE were ever made into a movie, who would your dream or, to keep things interesting, nightmare cast be?

AW: Hm. I could easily see someone like I’d cast Molly Parker as Tara and Tony Lee as Harry.
Nightmare cast? Puppets. I have a hard time envisioning DARK ORACLE with puppets.

ATUF: What other projects can we look forwarding to reading from you soon?

AW: I'm working on the sequel to DARK ORACLE. It's called ROGUE ORACLE. In ROGUE, Tara Sheridan and Harry Li are chasing a Chernobyl survivor who's selling nuclear secrets on the international black market. Tara is coming to terms with her destiny as an oracle and rebelling against an ancient society of oracles of which her mother was a part. It’s due out in March 2011.
SPARKS will be released by Pocket-Juno Books in September 2010. 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.

ATUF: What are some of your favorite titles/authors in the paranormal genres?

AW: Some of my favorites are Ann Aguirre, Jeri Smith-Ready, MLN Hanover, and Linda Robertson. My TBR stack covers my coffee table. I know that there’s a TV remote under there somewhere, but I haven’t seen it for months.

ATUF: What was the hardest thing you had to learn in order to become a published novelist?

AW: As boring as it sounds, being disciplined to work harder and faster was the most important thing for me. I did National Novel Writing Month to learn how to put together a book before the inspiration had fled. DARK ORACLE is a National Novel Writing Month winning book.

ATUF: Can you tell us about your favorite scene in DARK ORACLE?

AW: My favorite scenes are those between Tara and the leader of Delphi’s Daughters, the Pythia. Tara reverts to a rebellious teenager when she deals with the Pythia, and I’m never quite sure of the Pythia’s motives. Sparks always fly when I put the two of them in a room.

ATUF: Can you explain the world building of DARK ORACLE? What is unique about how conceived it?

AW: The world of DARK ORACLE includes a lot of imagery from the Tarot, and the characters were drawn at random from Tarot cards. I literally wrote the book with a deck of cards in hand.
Tara, for example, was inspired by the Queen of Swords. The Queen of Swords depicts a woman staring pensively into a stormy sky. She’s lifting sword as if it’s quite sharp, and extends her hand as if she’s cut herself with it. The swords, in general, represent intellect. The Queen of swords traditionally represents sadness and mourning or a particularly clever woman. I always associated her with the Snow Queen from fairy tales – cold, isolated, withdrawn.
And that interpretation was perfect for the story. The Queen of Swords became my inspiration for Tara Sheridan. Tara narrowly survived an attack years before by a serial killer called the Gardener. The experience left her physically and emotionally scarred, and she withdrew entirely from work and from life.

ATUF: If DARK ORACLE was a Frankenstein book compiled from elements of other books, what would some of those other books be?

AW: Waite’s PICTORIAL KEY TO THE TAROT, plus television’s X-Files, plus BULFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY, plus any random textbook on quantum physics.

ATUF: In honor of Paranormal Summer Fest, can you describe your perfect Paranormal Summer read? And where would you love to be vacationing while reading it?

AW: A perfect summer vacation would be someplace with sand and water. And a bookstore nearby!
I like a summer read that challenges me. I want something fresh that will make me think. A really good story will suck me in and give me a sunburn - because I’d be forgetting to reapply sun block on a regular basis!

ATUF: Thanks so much for stopping by Alayna.  Come back anytime!

Visit Alayna online:

• Website
• Twitter

Giveaway

Giveaway courtesy of Simon & Schuster

Two (2) copies of DARK ORACLE by Alayna Williams

 

Book Description

TARA SHERIDAN HAS A GIFT . . . AND IT ALMOST KILLED HER.

As a criminal profiler, Tara used science and her intuitive skill at Tarot card divination to track down the dangerous and depraved, including the serial killer who left her scarred from head to toe. Since that savage attack, Tara has been a recluse. But now an ancient secret society known as Delphi’s Daughters has asked for her help in locating missing scientist Lowell Magnusson. And Tara, armed with her Tarot deck, her .38, and a stack of misgivings, agrees to try.

Tara immediately senses there is far more at stake than one man’s life. At his government lab in the New Mexico desert, Magnusson had developed groundbreaking technology with terrifying potential. Working alongside the brusque but charismatic agent Harry Li, Tara discovers that Magnusson’s daughter, Cassie, has knowledge that makes her a target too. The more Tara sees into the future, the more there is to fear. She knows she has to protect Cassie. But there may be no way to protect herself—from the enemies circling around her, or from the long-buried powers stirring to life within. . . .

Click HERE to read an excerpt from DARK ORACLE

GIVEAWAY GUIDLINES

1. Open to US only
2. Fill out the form below
3. Entries for all Paranormal Summer Fest giveaways must be received by Midnight MST on July 4th.  All the giveaways winners will be announced on July 6th.

I would greatly appreciate if you shared this giveaway on your blog or favorite social networks.  And please say hi to Alayna. Thanks!

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