Ex Libris

I am very happy to welcome back once again to Ex Libris one of my favourite urban fantasy authors, the lovely Laura Bickle! You might remember Laura and her books since I seem to be yapping nonstop about them, but what can I say, I just loved her Anya Kalinczyk and Oracle series and if you haven't read her work yet, what are you waiting for?! What I love about Laura's writing is that besides the gripping, nail-bitingly exciting storylines not only does she bring us wonderfully layered and interesting characters, but her writing is simply captivating and beautifully lyrical. So please give Laura a warm welcome as I got to ask her some questions about her Anya Kalinczyk series and there are some terrific giveaways at the end waiting for you. ;-)

Stella: Hi Laura, welcome back to Ex Libris! :-) Can you please tell us a bit about yourself for those readers to whom you’re a new author? What you have been up to since you were last here?

Laura: Hi, Stella! Thanks so much for the chance to visit with you again! :-)

I write YA and urban fantasy. My background is in criminology and library science, and I’m owned by six cats. They like to help with the writing process by walking all over my keyboard. We have nicknamed one of them “ERF” because that was the first word she typed. Her real name is Luna, and I’ve included a picture of her happy self at work, critiquing my latest manuscript.

My latest release is a YA thriller, . Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the outside world. But the outside world comes to her when a helicopter falls out of the sky near her house. Katie must confront not only a massive disaster unfolding in the world outside her community, but also the threat of darkness in her own increasingly fragile society.

The sequel, , is coming out this September.


Laura: By day, Anya Kalinczyk is an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department. By night, she’s the rarest kind of spiritual medium, a Lantern. While other mediums allow spirits to use their hands and voices to communicate, Anya devours and incinerates them. With the help of her fire salamander familiar, Sparky, and an eccentric group of ghost hunters, Anya chases down unseen threats to her city.

My favorite line is the first line of : “Truth burned.” I have an excerpt of the first chapter available here.


Laura: I would love to do additional books! My contract on those two is finished, but fingers crossed that this can happen someday.


Laura: Let’s do this personal-ad style!

Anya: I see ghosts. You will, too. Arson investigator seeks supernaturally-friendly companion. Friends first. Must love pets. Ideal companion will take things slow and not mind salamander sleeping in bed.

Sparky

Sparky: Elemental familiar wants warm bed with Glo-Worm toy for plenty of snuggles. Cats okay. Must have grounding outlets for electrical appliances and not be too attached to cell phone.

Brian: Geeky guy looking for red-hot lurv. Let me reformat your hard drive, but don’t ask where I got that spectrometer. You don’t really want to know about my day job.

Drake: Looking for that forever relationship? Disillusioned humanitarian with emotional baggage seeks dragon to wreak vengeance and burn city that turned its back on him. The more ancient, the better. Smokers okay.

Alyson Hannigan as Anya

Laura: I never picture real actors when I’m writing a book, but I think that Anya could be played by someone like Alyson Hannigan. I could also see Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brian.

Sparky would have to be CGI, but I would love for him to have some of the look of Toothless in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. Unless any of Godzilla’s children are free, or someone has a trained komodo dragon that would be really tolerant of stage makeup. In any event, I imagine that he looks something like this:


Laura: “Ghostbusters in Detroit with dragons and arson.”


Laura: I’d been having a weird series of dreams about devouring ghosts. They were sort of disturbing…and possibly connected to eating too much pizza too late at night. But I began to wonder how I could work those pizza-ghosts into a story, because the whole experience felt so vivid and real. I wondered if it would translate to the page, since dreams rarely make narrative sense in the waking world. But I think it worked.


Laura: Anya’s rubber duck collection was inspired by my own rubber duck collection. They line a small shelf in a bathroom I call “The Quackarium.”


Laura: The sequel to , , will be released September 3. As the title suggests, Katie has to confront the devastation in the world beyond her community. Her chief challenge will be protecting those she loves and her own survival in a very dangerous new landscape.


Laura: Hee. Well, I just started karate lessons. I took karate when I was a teenager, and promptly forgot all about it. But I’ve started up again. And my sensei is so patient to suffer through my lack of coordination. Picture a duck trying to do karate, and that’s pretty much what I look like. But I’m determined to learn!

Thank you so much for hosting me today! It’s so nice to chat with you again. :-D

Laura Bickle's professional background is in criminal justice and library science. When she's not patrolling the stacks at the public library, she can be found reaming up stories about the monsters under the stairs. She has written several contemporary fantasy nov-els for adults, and  is her first young adult novel. Laura lives in Ohio with her husband and five mostly-reformed feral cats. For more about Laura, connect with her at

There are several great giveaways going on, where you could win several of Laura's novels, so just enter them by filling out the Rafflecopter forms below:

Giveaways end on 21 July 2013!