Author Promo: Ann Gimpel: Psyche's Promise (Book 3 of the Transformation Series) - Author Interview

Hey guys! Remember earlier in the year, I ran a promo for 2 books, Psyche's Prophecy and Psyche's Search? That was Books 1 and 2 in the Transformation series respectively. Click here to read more about those books. I read them recently and let me say, they were amazing! Really loved them, and simply cannot wait to read Psyche's Promise.

Psyche's Promise

The Transformation Series is about finding out who we truly are when the chips are down. About what is real and what is illusory. About what matters and what doesn’t. It’s easy to show our best side when everything is going well. How about when the world is disintegrating around us? What happens then?

In this final book of the Transformation Series, Lara and Trevor’s relationship undergoes stresses that threaten to annihilate them. Constantly hungry, besieged by dark forces, they need every resource they’ve developed as a couple to keep from ripping each other apart. With Lillian and Raven— two ancient Celtic Sidhe— off fighting their own war against Goblin hordes, Lara has only herself and her half-baked magic standing between survival and certain death for herself, her love and their child.

The remote location that was supposed to solve all Lara and Trevor’s problems has done anything but. Though she works diligently, Lara’s crash course in magic proves woefully inadequate. When Trevor is captured by demons, Lara curses her decision to leave Seattle. “If only I’d known,” she cries, convinced she can’t go back. Or can she?

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Check out the official trailer here!

Ann Gimpel

Ann Gimpel is a mountaineer at heart. Recently retired from a long career as a psychologist, she remembers many hours at her desk where her body may have been stuck inside four walls, but her soul was planning yet one more trip to the backcountry. Around the turn of the last century (that would be 2000, not 1900!), she managed to finagle moving to the Eastern Sierra, a mecca for those in love with the mountains. It was during long backcountry treks that Ann’s writing evolved. Unlike some who see the backcountry as an excuse to drag friends and relatives along, Ann prefers her solitude. Stories always ran around in her head on those journeys, sometimes as a hedge against abject terror when challenging conditions made her fear for her life, sometimes for company. Eventually, she returned from a trip and sat down at the computer. Three months later, a five hundred page novel emerged. Oh, it wasn’t very good, but it was a beginning. And she learned a lot between writing that novel and its sequel.

Around that time, a friend of hers suggested she try her hand at short stories. It didn’t take long before that first story found its way into print and they’ve been accepted pretty regularly since then. A trilogy, the Transformation Series released by Gypsy Shadow Publishing, features Psyche’s Prophecy, Psyche’s Search and Psyche’s Promise. One of Ann’s passions has always been ecology, so her tales often have a green twist and the Transformation Series is no exception.

In addition to writing, Ann enjoys wilderness photography. Part of her website is devoted to photos of her beloved Sierra. And she lugs pounds of camera equipment in her backpack to distant locales every year. A standing joke is that over ten percent of her pack weight is camera gear which means someone else has to carry the food! That someone else is her husband. They’ve shared a life together for a very long time. Children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out their family.

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon

And now, let's welcome Ann to the blog for a short interview with me!

Hey! It’s lovely to have you on the blog today! So, shall we begin? J

It’s lovely to be here. Thanks so much for hosting me.

For starters, why not tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?

Awk! One of the problems with being a writer is I don’t think I have any secrets left between my blog (http://anngimpel.blogspot.com) and my website (www.anngimpel.com) .My three loves are mountaineering, psychology and writing. I’ve trekked the backcountry with a pack on my back for better than thirty years. Maybe because of that, I’m an ardent environmentalist. My grown-up kids still complain that they hear my voice nagging them to turn out the lights and put on a sweater!

What made you want to become a writer?

I don’t know that it was a conscious decision. Stories ran about in my head for years when I was on backpacking and mountaineering trips. By the way, those trips were always fairly solitary endeavors. Even if I went with other people, we usually were so spread out that it was common for hours to go by where it was just me, alone, in the wilderness. That gives the imagination lots of time to, well, imagine. (I still turn around sometimes, thinking I’ve heard a voice behind me. But there’s never anyone there.)

I came home from a trip over Labor Day 2008, sat down at the computer and began to write the tale that had emerged during that four day adventure. I’ve been writing ever since.

Do you have any hidden talents? *wink*

Well, I don’t know how hidden it is, but my background and training as a psychologist gives me a good, working understanding of people. That’s always been the easy part for me—developing believable characters. And when I branched out into paranormal romance with an, um, discernible heat level, it felt like a natural extension. (No pun intended.)

What gives you inspiration for your book(s)?

People, mythology and the mountains. Particularly mythology. When I had an active private practice, I did a lot of dream work with clients. Dreams are nothing if not symbolic. I draw a lot on Celtic imagery in my writing. And I have an interest in the Norse gods as well. Some of my writing has a “green” twist. I figure that’s my contribution to trying to maintain the ability of the Earth to sustain us for another few hundred years.

Are your characters based off real people, or did they all come entirely from your imagination?

My characters are composites of people I’ve known, with fantastic elements tossed into the mix. After all, I’ve never actually known anyone who could cast a spell that really worked. They just wish it would have. And sometimes a character will surprise me. For example, I can be halfway through a novella and realize that the dragon is loosely related to my mother on some of her less-than-stellar days.

Could you tell us a bit about your book and why it is a must-read?

I’m not sure which book you’re showcasing. If it’s Psyche’s Promise, that is the final book in the Transformation Series. The first two were Psyche’s Prophecy and Psyche’s Search.

The cover blurb for Psyche’s Promise is:

The Transformation Series is about finding out who we truly are when the chips are down. About what is real and what is illusory. About what matters and what doesn’t. It’s easy to show our best side when everything is going well. How about when the world is disintegrating around us? What happens then?

In this final book of the Transformation Series, Lara and Trevor’s relationship undergoes stresses that threaten to annihilate them. Constantly hungry, besieged by dark forces, they need every resource they’ve developed as a couple to keep from ripping each other apart. With Lillian and Raven— two ancient Celtic Sidhe— off fighting their own war against Goblin hordes, Lara has only herself and her half-baked magic standing between survival and certain death for herself, her love and their child.

The remote location that was supposed to solve all Lara and Trevor’s problems has done anything but. Though she works diligently, Lara’s crash course in magic proves woefully inadequate. When Trevor is captured by demons, Lara curses her decision to leave Seattle. “If only I’d known,” she cries, convinced she can’t go back. Or can she?

The Transformation Series is urban fantasy, set in the “real” world, but with characters that have special, magical abilities. Lara McInnis, the protagonist, is a psychologist with psychic ability. Like us all, she has her strengths and weaknesses and is a reluctant hero.

What do you love most about the writing process?

Oh, that’s an easy one. I love the creative flow where I get so lost in my characters and my world that the “real” world feels weird when I have to stop writing and do something prosaic like go make dinner.

And of course, do you have a particular favorite character? I know an author will love most if not all of the characters he/she creates, but I’m sure there must be a favorite of yours! So who is it, and why?

You know, that varies, but I think my current favorite is Lillian. She’s a Sidhe in the Transformation Series. In spite of all her power, she finds she can’t turn everything to her will. It’s a hard lesson and one that takes her all three books to truly assimilate.

Will you tell us a little about your plans for the future, and maybe other books that are in the works? (Ideas thought out, perhaps even a rough draft?)

I have two paranormal romance novellas coming soon from Liquid Silver Books. A Time for Everything will be out 11/26. It’s a Scottish time-traveling romance. I spent a month in the UK this summer, so my depiction of the wretched weather comes from experience. The second one, Gabrielle’s Cauldron, will be out 12/31. Another urban fantasy, this one features a warg, a witch and a pixie who overcome a lot to try to save the world.

There’s a third paranormal romance novella, Hello Darkness, about a Park Ranger, her crazy Native American, cheating husband and the man who steps in to save her. That one’s hunting for a home right now.

I also have two other novels that are making the rounds in search of a publisher. And, of course, a bunch of short stories.

And now, just some little random questions!

Favorite colour? Purple

Favorite place? Anywhere in the mountains

Favorite book? Oh my, I don’t know. Loved LOTR, but I also like almost anything by Karen Marie Moning. And I’m really enjoying Seanan McGuire and the October Daye series right now. I find an author I like, then read just about everything they’ve ever written. Then I move on.

Favorite genre? (and why, if you like)

That’s a hard one. I love high fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction and even pure, unadulterated romance. I think I started writing paranormal romance because it’s a blend of my two favorite genres. There’s something compelling about HEA endings. Even if you know you’re reading a romance and there will be an HEA, it’s still intriguing to see how the author gets there.

To end off, is there anything you would like to say to your readers?

I enjoy feedback. It’s how I grow as a writer. So, I’d love to invite anyone to read my stories and write to me. Tell me what you thought. Were there characters you really liked? Or ones you thought could have been improved upon.

Also, keep your eye on my blog (http://anngimpel.blogspot.com) . To showcase my two new Liquid Silver Book novellas, I’ll be giving away a Kindle Fire. The contest will run from 12/15 through 1/15/13. Rules will be posted, but basically anyone who follows my blog and leaves a comment about either novella will be entered into the giveaway.

Hmm, I think that should be about it for today! It was a pleasure to have you on the blog today! Wishing you all the best in your career! :D

Thanks so much. All the best to you as well.

So yep, that's about it for today! Thanks for visiting! I do hope you'll check this series out, because it truly is very good.

Blog Tour: Psyche's Prophecy and Psyche's Search by Ann Gimpel - Guest Post

Hey guys! Welcome to my tour stop of Psyche's Search and Psyche's Prophecy. Today, Ann Gimpel, the author of these 2 books will be joining us with a short guest post about an aspect of writing. It's at the end, so please, stay around to read it! I loved it, and I'm sure you will too! And now, presenting the first 2 books in the Transformation Series, we have Psyche's Prophecy and Psyche's Search! I will be reviewing these 2 books at a later date, so do look out for it!

Psyche's Prophecy (Book 1)

What if your psychotherapist could really see into your soul? Picture all those secrets lying hidden, perhaps squirming a bit, just out of view. Would you invite your analyst to take a peek behind that gossamer curtain? Read your aura? Scry your future…?

Classically trained at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Doctor Lara McInnis has a special gift that helps her with her patients. Born with “the sight” she can read auras, while flirting with a somewhat elusive ability to foretell the future. Lara becomes alarmed when several of her patients—and a student or two—tell her about the same cataclysmic dream.

Reaching out to the Institute for answers, Lara’s paranormal ability sounds a sharp warning and she runs up hard against a dead end. Her search for assistance leads her to a Sidhe and ancient Celtic rituals blaze their way into her life. Complicating the picture is a deranged patient who’s been hell bent on destroying Lara ever since she tried to help his abused wife, a boyfriend with a long-buried secret and a society that’s crumbling to dust as shortages of everything from electricity to food escalate.

Amazon Paperback | Amazon Kindle | BN | Smashwords | ARe | Books on Board

Psyche's Search (Book 2)

Born with the sight, Laura McInnis is ambivalent about her paranormal ability. Oh it’s useful enough some of the time with her psychotherapy patients. But mostly it’s an embarrassment and an inconvenience—especially when her visions drag her to other worlds. Or into Goblin dens. In spite of escalating violence, incipient food shortages and frequent power blackouts, Lara is still far too attached to the comfortable life she shares with her boyfriend, Trevor, a flight attendant who lost his job when aviation fuel got so expensive—and so scarce—his airline went out of business. Forced to seek assistance to hone her unusual abilities in Psyche’s Prophecy, Book I of this series, Lara is still quite the neophyte in terms of either summoning or bending her magic to do much of anything.

Reluctantly roped into channeling her unpredictable psychic talents to help a detective who saved her from a psychopathic killer, Lara soon finds herself stranded in the murky underbelly of a world inhabited by demons. The Sidhe offer hope, but they are so high-handed Lara stubbornly resists their suggestions. Riots, death on all sides, a mysterious accident and one particular demon targeting her, push Lara to make some hard decisions. When all seems lost, the Dreaming, nestled in the heart of Celtic magic, calls out to her.

Amazon Paperback | Amazon Kindle | BN | Smashwords

Ann Gimpel

Ann Gimpel is a mountaineer at heart. Recently retired from a long career as a psychologist, she remembers many hours at her desk where her body may have been stuck inside four walls, but her soul was planning yet one more trip to the backcountry. Around the turn of the last century (that would be 2000, not 1900!), she managed to finagle moving to the Eastern Sierra, a mecca for those in love with the mountains. It was during long backcountry treks that Ann’s writing evolved. Unlike some who see the backcountry as an excuse to drag friends and relatives along, Ann prefers her solitude. Stories always ran around in her head on those journeys, sometimes as a hedge against abject terror when challenging conditions made her fear for her life, sometimes for company. Eventually, she returned from a trip and sat down at the computer. Three months later, a five hundred page novel emerged. Oh, it wasn’t very good, but it was a beginning. And, she learned a lot between writing that novel and its sequel.

Around that time, a friend of hers suggested she try her hand at short stories. It didn’t take long before that first story found its way into print and they’ve been accepted pretty regularly since then. A trilogy, the Transformation Series, featuring Psyche’s Prophecy, Psyche’s Search and Psyche’s Promise is complete. The initial two books have been published, with the final volume scheduled for release in 2012. One of Ann’s passions has always been ecology, so her tales often have a green twist and the Transformation Series is no exception.

In addition to writing, Ann enjoys wilderness photography. Part of her website is devoted to photos of her beloved Sierra. And she lugs pounds of camera equipment in her backpack to distant locales every year. A standing joke is that over ten percent of her pack weight is camera gear which means someone else has to carry the food! That someone else is her husband. They’ve shared a life together for a very long time. Children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out their family.

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon

And now, joining us with an awesome guest post, let's welcome Ann!

Artemis and Her Golden Bow

Many of you probably remember the Artemis myth. She’s one of the most widely known of the Greek goddesses. Her Roman counterpart is Diana. Artemis is a departure from the maiden/mother/crone depiction of women in that she was a virgin goddess. Women who attended her also had to be chaste. What she’s probably best known for, other than tending to the moon with her brother, Apollo, is righting wrongs.

Years ago when I was in Soundpeace, a metaphysical bookstore in Ashland, Oregon, I plucked a silver pendant off its black velvet backing. It was about an inch-and-a-half in diameter and had a woman with a dog by her side and a bow behind her, carrying a light. This was long before I’d studied much in the way of mythology. All I knew was that I was drawn to that pendant and had to have it. It’s been around my neck for most of the thirty years or so since then. In the intervening years, I’ve come to recognize my pendant goddess for who she is: Artemis.

So what does that have to do with my life? Or with writing? To answer the first question, I’ve always had a finely etched sense of what’s right and have fought many a losing battle because I didn’t want to see the other side, mostly comprised of big businesses like pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies win. While my ideals may have been admirable, retrospectively, I never had a chance. The magic of writing is you can make everyone an Erin Brokovich. Remember? She took on a big corporation that was polluting water and won the largest class action suit ever.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that in real life things like that don’t happen very often, which leads us to the answer to the second question. In fiction, they happen all the time. I think that’s why people read. At least it’s why I do. To transport myself to the world of the possible. To have heroes I can root for. A skilled author can scare me half to death that things won’t go well, even when I know in my heart of hearts they won’t kill off the protagonist. Or, maybe they will. George R.R. Martin is quite good at that. Though, I must admit I didn’t like the series nearly so well after Eddard lost his head. It started feeling like a Greek tragedy after that.

There is a fine line to who to kill off in a story so you don’t alienate your readers. That’s something I struggle with. I might add maim and traumatize to kill. There are lots of ways an author can stress his/her characters. Each stressor adds depth to a character, but only if you can tie the wounding back in with how the character acts after it happens. The character shouldn’t overreact, but they can’t underreact either.

To put a finer point on things, it’s easy to kill off a character no one liked in the first place. Face it, even the author didn’t particularly like them which is why you, the reader, saw them as vapid and shallow, too. This is why drawing three-dimensional antagonists is just as important as creating fully developed protagonists. The reader has to feel something when a character dies or gets hurt—other than relief because the character seemed superfluous and annoying anyway.

To the extent fiction mirrors real life as much as possible, we can relate to it. That’s one of the reasons I set my novels in “real world” settings rather than a more typical, high fantasy world. I want that dystopian, near-future to feel real enough to make readers think. I suppose that’s my Artemis complex creeping in, but there’s not much I can do about that. One of the reasons many of Stephen King’s books work so well is they start out feeling fairly normal. The creepy, crawly elements often don’t intrude till near the end, like in Bag of Bones, for example. I don’t think the ghouls came out until the last fifty pages. By then I was so caught up in the reality of the world King had drawn—because it was my world—the addition of fantastical elements felt perfectly logical.

What have some of your favorite books been? Why?
What drew you in and made the world feel real?
Who are some of your favorite fictional characters?

So yep, that's about it for today! Go here to check out the other tour stops! You'll find loads of awesome stuff on the other tour sites too! :D