A Review of Sparks by Laura Bickle

Five Fangs for Sparks by Laura Bickle

The urban fantasy genre has a wonderful new heroine in Anya Kalinczyk.

Laura Bickle's urban fantasy world is complete and unique. In a genre drowning under the weight of vampires, witches and werewolves Bickle's character Anya, a Lantern, is something different and refreshing. And the fire elemental Sparky the salamander- brilliant. The two of them together make a wonderful team that I really enjoy reading about.

The books display the darkness and despair that circle around the real city of Detroit while showcasing a fictional side that we don't see- the world of spirits, elementals and all sorts of darkness feeding off the despair. The backdrop is perfect. And Anya is believable- she's not hip or decked out in leather like some urban fantasy heroines or is she an all powerful creature battling the darkness alone, thought the possibilities of what she is to become are there and she is developing naturally in her role.

In the second book of this series, Sparks, Anya who is a rare psychic medium called a Lantern is trying to keep up with her day job as a Detroit fire investigator. Her newest series of cases raise some crazy questions and point to spontaneous human combustion- but what may be behind it is ghosts.

But how and why?

Turns out a local celebrity/con artist may be behind the ghosts and the spontaneous fires but how?

Anya has to put everything on the line to stop the ghost collector- all while trying to protect Sparky's recently lain eggs.

Sparks is even better than the first book Embers.

The interaction between characters is much more detailed and fleshed out, Anya's character is also fuller and richer and I loved the introduction of a new character Charon the ghostly connection between this world and the underworld. I really hope to see more of him in upcoming books.

I do question Anya's taste in men- first Drake another Lantern but also a firebug not to mention a little off his rocker, now Brian a highly intelligent tech geek who does government work- top secret work. He seems nice enough but something about his ethics and his murky aura make Anya wonder about him. I honestly don't think the two of them mesh- their whole code of ethics and thoughts on ghosts are totally different.

Sparks gives us (and Anya) some new information about Anya's past and her origins which are quite surprising and I am looking forward to seeing where that little twist takes the story in future books.

And here's the part that really got me in the book...they discuss spirits. Do they have feelings, a consciousness and does it matter if they do?

Anya feels the ghosts are still a part of humanity that they matter, Brian and another ghost hunter disagree.

I think that if humans are who we are because of our souls and the souls turn to spirits when we die how can what essentially makes us who we are not be important?

That's something to think about isn't it?

Sparks was a fantastic fiery read that I couldn't put down until it was finished. If each book in this series just keeps getting better I can't wait to read the next installment.

If you are looking for something out of the ordinary in the urban fantasy genre- this series is one to try. Not a vampire in sight, no werewolves either but you'll get lots of ghosts and elementals and Lantern or two.

Here is the book description from the back of the book:

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.

Free Book Friday : Sparks by Laura Bickle

If you loved Embers you are really going to enjoy Sparks.

Laura Bickle's Sparks is even better than the first book Embers.

My review will be up tomorrow, be sure to check it out. This book is fabulous.

Here is the book description from the back of the book:

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.

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A Review of Embers by Laura Bickle

Embers is a hot debut novel for Laura Bickle.

Embers is the first book of a sizzling new series that is sure to leave you smoldering for more of Anya and Sparky.

Set in Detroit (which immediately drew me to this book since I am an hour's drive away from Motown), the book features Anya, a lantern, which is someone who can see, communicate with and devour spirits. She's part of a ghost hunting team though she doesn't really want to be since she is also an arson investigator and does not want the ghost hunting to jeopardize her job.

But now a serial arsonist is throwing her two worlds together and Anya is feeling more than a little conflicted- more like totally confused and torn as the flames threaten to consume her- along with all of Detroit, if she doesn't figure out how to stop the arsonist before Devil's Night.

Embers is the epitome of urban fantasy- this is what the genre is all about- a little hard and edgy, emotional, with a dash of romance thrown in- all tied together in a complex world peppered with supernatural creatures and phenomenon.

Sparky has to be the most unusual and one of the best sidekicks out there. I can honestly say I have never felt all cuddly about a salamander before but now after reading about Sparky, I am seeing them in a new light. Sparky is full of personality and pizazz which greatly adds to the story. A good sidekick can make or break a book sometimes and Sparky helped put this book in the keeper pile.

Embers is a great UF book filled with emotional turmoil, a character that is richly developed (but not complete which hopefully means we will get to see plenty of character growth in the upcoming books) and the world building is solid. The minor characters are great story supporters and I really look forward to reading more of this series.

One thing I really enjoyed about Embers other than the gritty story line and complex characters, is that the author got Detroit and the underlying turmoil that is currently running through many areas in Michigan. She addressed the depression, the emotion, the energy that runs through the areas around here. The economic crisis, the old and new butting heads while trying to blend together even though the odds are stacked against it. She also gets that Detroiters (and Michigan people in general) are tough. It was great reading a story set in practically in my own backyard.

Interview with Laura Bickle, EMBERS Giveaway

Today at Fang-tastic Books we have an interview with Laura Bickle, author of EMBERS

Welcome Laura. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me!
Q: Please tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be a writer.
A: I’ve been writing as far back as I can remember, scribbling down stories or drawing pictures of different worlds. I had a pretty magical childhood – my mother was a school librarian, so I spent summers in a sunshine-filled nook in the back of the library. I read about mythology and legends, dragons and things that go bump in the night. I wanted to create something that would speak to other people like those books spoke to me.

As an adult, I kept scribbling. I was initially pretty shy about submitting my work, but I gradually discovered that other people were enjoying what I’d written. It’s a wonderful affirmation of that childhood dream. I feel like I’ve come full circle, in that respect.

Q: Do you have a “day job” or do you write full time?

A: I do have a day job, working in information technology. I hope someday to be able to make writing a full-time gig…I have so many ideas that I’d love to commit to paper. I’ve got to leave many of them behind, now, but the ideas are waiting in my notes for the time to make them come to life.

Q: Do you have a set schedule for writing or do you just go with the flow?

A: I do keep a very set schedule, a habit I developed while participating in National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write 50,000 words in a month. I highly recommend the experience for all writers – it really tests the boundaries of what you think you can accomplish. It helped me integrate writing into other aspects of my life, and definitely made it a priority. DARK ORACLE, written under my Alayna Williams pseudonym, and its sequel, ROGUE ORACLE, are both National Novel Writing Month books.

I don’t write 50,000 words every month. Mostly, I try to do about a thousand a day. But it’s good to know that I can, and that I have the ability to meet deadlines and commit those ideas to paper before they fly away. Before NaNoWriMo, that was a challenge for me. I’d start a project, pick it up, set it down, and would only occasionally finish. NaNoWriMo taught me that finishing is the single most important step on the road to becoming a writer.

Q: Do you need to be in a specific place or atmosphere before the words flow? Do you have a ritual that you do before sitting down to write?

A: I like to write, hunched over my laptop, in a corner of a room I have set aside for writing. It’s a room I have all to myself, with lovely eastern sunshine. I tend to miss the sunshine, since I’m mostly an evening writer. I get the most done in the late night hours, when the house is quiet. Setting aside a space for me to write made the activity of writing seem more “real” to me.

I enjoy listening to music while I write. I compile a soundtrack of sorts for each project, and play it in the background. It keeps those sharp, critical little voices in my head lulled to a dull murmur.

Q: What is the strangest source of inspiration you’ve had? Maybe something weird that ended up in one of your books or short stories.

A: The song “Big Lizard in my Backyard” was the inspiration for a short story I wrote for Down in the Cellar, called “Ketchup.” The song inspired the character, Bert, who was a lizardlike demon responsible for keeping the Gate to Hell closed and a plague of demon sockmonsters in check. His keepers (The West Indiana Synod of the Illuminati Local 451) feed him human sacrifices, and get busted trying to pick up a hooker to placate him.

It really wasn’t as demented as that sounds…yeah. Yeah, it was. I had a lot of fun with Bert.

Q: If you could offer one tidbit of information for new writers, what would it be?

A: The single most important step along the path to getting published is finishing. The next step is having the discipline to do it again. And again. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s the whole learning-by-doing thing.
Q: Name one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you.

A: I belly dance. Not well, but I manage to shimmy around the dance floor without embarrassing myself too badly. Unless I trip on my veil or drop a zil. That never ends well for me, but watchers seem to enjoy it.

I originally signed up for classes a couple of years ago to help me get over my shyness. I figure that if I can overcome the complete and utter terror of belly dancing before strangers, I can tackle just about anything else in life.

Q:What are some of your hobbies besides writing?

A: My husband and I are amateur astronomers. On dark summer nights, we trot around the countryside, looking for shiny stuff in the sky to stare at. I think my favorite thing to watch is the moon. Maybe someday, we’ll expand into taking pictures.

I also collect and read Tarot cards for fun. As a writer, it’s really instructional for me to see the hero’s journey displayed in pictorial form.
Q: What can you tell us about your current work in progress?

A: I am finishing up on ROGUE ORACLE, the sequel to DARK ORACLE. DARK ORACLE is out in June, and ROGUE will be out in 2011, under my Alayna Williams pseudonym. DARK ORACLE introduced Tara Sheridan, a criminal profiler who uses Tarot cards to solve crimes. In ROGUE ORACLE, Tara’s destiny becomes further enmeshed with Delphi’s Daughters, and ancient secret society of oracles. With the help of a federal agent, she’s trying to stop a Chernobyl survivor from selling nuclear secrets on the international black market.

Q: OK, now onto what we’ve all been waiting for: let’s talk about your newest release EMBERS. Please tell us a little about the book.

A: By day, Anya Kalinczyk is an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department. By night, she's a ghost-hunter who uses her powers as a medium to devour malicious spirits. With the help of her fire salamander familiar, Sparky, and an eccentric team of ghost hunters, Anya must stop a serial arsonist from summoning an ancient entity that will leave Detroit in cinders on Devil's Night.

Q: The book is set in Detroit, will all of the books in this series be in Detroit? And is this a fictional Detroit or a pretty accurate Detroit (aside from all the urban fantasy stuff)? And why Detroit?

A: All of the books will be set in Detroit. The city has such a fascinating and rich urban landscape, plenty of intriguing places to tell stories, that I don’t think I’ll run out.

The Detroit I describe in EMBERS is as faithful as I can make it to the original. I took tours, analyzed maps, and picked the brains of people who’ve lived there. The landscape includes many real places. For example, Detroit has a defunct (though recently resurrected) salt mine that stretches beneath the city. I was fascinated by that hidden world underneath the streets, and made it the nesting place for a dragon.

In SPARKS, the sequel to EMBERS, I was fixated upon the abandoned Michigan Central Station. It’s an amazing structure, fallen into decay. It was the perfect place for me to create a way station for ghosts traveling from this world into the next.

And as for the reason behind choosing Detroit…Detroit’s a great city. The history behind it is incredibly compelling, and the Art Deco architecture makes for a wonderful setting. And when choosing a city for an arson investigator with a fire salamander familiar…part of that history infamously includes fire. The destructiveness of Devil’s Night has waned in recent decades, but there are still people who remember it.

Q: It mentions in your bio you are a Midwest girl, I am curious (being a Michigan resident myself) if you have ever lived in Michigan since your newest book is set in Detroit?

A: My husband is from Detroit, and I have family from Michigan. My husband’s been dutifully playing tour guide and answering my nit-picky questions about the city. He’s a very patient muse.

Q: I see you have a lot of experience writing about criminal stuff- EMBERS takes that a step farther to work with arson, how did you come up with that idea?

A: I have an educational background in criminology, and have worked in and around criminal justice for many years. As a result, dark things occasionally rattle out of my brain and squirm onto paper. Learning about arson was an exciting chance to dip my toes into something new.

Q: Next up in the series is SPARKS, what will Anya have to face next?

A: 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 celebrity psychic.

Well thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me!


More information on EMBERS and SPARKS can be found at http://www.salamanderstales.com/

More information on DARK ORACLE and ROGUE ORACLE can be found at http://www.alaynawilliams.com/

Excerpt from EMBERS:

She stepped into the bathroom and clicked on the overhead light. The black-and-white retro tile gleamed. A collection of rubber duckies lined a shelf on one wall, grinning down at her with cartoon smiles. Anya turned the bathtub tap as hot as it would go, dropped a fistful of bath salts into the water. She plucked her favorite duck, a jaunty pirate with a plastic eye patch, from the collection and dropped him in the water. He spun in lazy circles under the faucet.
She peeled off her sticky, pickle-stained clothes and stuffed them in the washing machine in the bathroom closet. The chill rippled over her body as she measured detergent into the basin and set the water temperature to hot. When she'd moved in, Anya had the foresight to install an extra-large water heater. As a fire investigator, her work was always filthy and she didn't deny herself the luxury of as much hot water as she needed.
She paused, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her light chestnut hair swung over her milky-pale shoulder which was studded with a constellation of beauty marks. Her fingers fluttered over her chest. Below the salamander collar that housed Sparky, a black char mark was burned into the flesh over her left breast. The wound didn't hurt. She knew it would eventually fade, like all the other exorcism burns, but it was a lingering reminder of the soul she'd devoured.
She stepped into the bath, wiggling her toes, feeling the warmth begin to radiate up her legs. She sank up to her neck in the water, massaging the hot water through her hair. The pirate duck bumped against her toes. She reached for a loofah and began to scrub hard, as if she could scrub the memory of the dead child away from her skin.
The sepulchral voice captured on the recorder buzzed in the back of her head, and her thoughts nipped at it:
"Sirrush is coming."
Her brow wrinkled. She'd never heard the name spoken aloud, only read it in books. Sirrush was an old term used for firedrakes and salamanders, a name used only in witches' ceremonial magic to draw down the element of fire. But the spirit's message seemed to be aimed at her and she chewed on it, tasting it for any flavor of a threat.
As the water cooled, Anya climbed out of the bath. She smelled no pickles or ash as she pulled the drain plug, just soap and a hint of jasmine from the bath salts. The pirate duck spiraled around the drain.
Anya toweled off, and pulled on her robe, decorated in a pattern of yellow cartoon ducks. Wet footprints on the shag rug in the hall trailed behind her. She paused in the hallway to turn up the thermostat, looking forward to the warmth of her bed. A simple futon piled high with blankets dominated the small bedroom. Anya couldn't bring herself to buy a second-hand bed. All beds were stained too much with the dreams of their prior owners.
Anya climbed under the blankets, sighing. She'd be able to get a couple of hours of sleep before her shift began. As she drowsed, the salamander collar warmed around her neck. Sparky unpeeled himself, slipped down to the floor. He padded across the floor to a large flannel dog bed placed against the wall. Resting in the bed was his favorite toy: a Gloworm. The stuffed toy was a flashlight ingeniously disguised in a cherubic plastic head and a caterpillar body. Since it ran on batteries, there was little electrical damage that Sparky could do to it that would result in a hazardous situation.
Sparky placed his paw on the Gloworm. It lit up. He removed his paw, and the light winked out. He cocked his head, watching it, then patted it again.
On.
Off.
On.
Anya scrunched her eyes shut against the blinking light. As much as he enjoyed biting ghosts and other ghoulies on the spiritual plane, Sparky could only directly affect two things in the physical world: energy and Anya. The toy had brought him many hours of delight. She'd placed it in the dog bed that he never used, hoping that Sparky could eventually be persuaded to sleep on his own in his own bed.
A whine emanated from the side of Anya's bed.
Anya opened one eye. Sparky's head peered over the mountain of covers. Anya groaned. She was too tired to try to Ferberize the salamander tonight.
She climbed out of bed, grabbed the Gloworm, and tossed it into her bed. Sparky climbed in, rooted under the blankets. He made himself comfortable, draped over one of Anya's hips. He cradled the Gloworm between his paws. Anya idly stroked his loose speckled skin and Sparky began to purr, a low vibration in the back of his ribs.
Sometimes, Anya wondered what it would have been like to have had Brian's warmth next to her. She'd seriously contemplated it in the past. But she didn't know how to explain sharing a bed with a familiar elemental spirit. While it was true that humans couldn't see Sparky, his presence could be sensed: fluctuations in temperature, static electricity, a sense of being watched. When Anya had taken lovers before, Sparky had not taken well to them. It was distracting to be in the act of making love to a man with a five-foot salamander sitting at the foot of the bed, head cocked, slapping his tail on the blankets. Sparky manifested at will, unpredictably. But he could always be trusted to always make an appearance whenever Anya was in the presence of spirits...or when the possibility for intimacy with a man presented itself....
But then again, maybe sex was overrated. Sparky's warm tail coiled around her ankles and he snored softly. At least, Sparky had good manners: he didn't fart, scratch himself, or have morning breath. He was rather like sleeping with an electric blanket. . . which was probably the best Anya could hope for at the present.
Curled in the warm embrace of the salamander cuddling his toy, Anya drifted to sleep.

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