Guest Post/Promo – Ann Gimpel

Welcome to my stop on the Fire in the Ann Gimpel promotional tour which has been brought to you by Bewitching Book Tours. Here you can read Ann’s Guest post, a summary of the three books in the Transformation series and learn a little more about the author. Don't forget to visit the other blogs on this tour for more information about this book and the author.

Guest Post

The Magic of Storytelling

Storytelling began around fires when we were still hunter gatherers. It continued in inns and country houses through ancient and medieval times. The day a Bard came to town was a major event. Everyone gathered to hear him sing and tell stories. (Well, sometimes it was a “her” disguised as a “him”, but that’s because women’s roles were pretty strictly defined until rather recently.)

Families gathered around the radio until about the nineteen fifties when television came into common use. Of course there were radio news shows, but there were also lots of “story” shows. One of my favorites was Mystery Theater. I loved the sound effects: creaking doors, whooshing wings, and heartrending screams. I’m actually a little too young to remember sitting around a radio, but I bought tapes of Mystery Theater shows and listened to them while I was in college.

Stories have universal appeal. And not just for their entertainment value. Stories help us reach beyond ourselves. Sometimes they help us figure out the answer to a problem. Sometimes they give us hope when we’re at a low point. Sometimes they give us new ideas. One of those “aha” moments when things suddenly click into place and we see what’s laid out before us through fresh eyes.

One of the questions blog interviewers always ask is, “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” It was never that black and white for me. I suppose you could say the writing bug sort of crept up behind me and latched its little claws into my soul. At the beginning of things, nearly everything I wrote had some sort of ecological twist because that’s important to me.

Somewhere along the line, I fell prey to my characters. Quite the hostage, in fact. I’d have ideas about where I wanted a story to go and the little rascals would simply thumb their noses at me and go their own way. Nothing like sitting at the keyboard feeling like a medium. It’s a bit on the eerie side. But even I had to admit my character driven stories were better, fuller, and more satisfying than ones where I had more direct control over the end product.

I suppose I’ve always been a storyteller. Back when I had a private practice, I’d often tell stories to my clients. Sometimes it’s easier to hear something when it’s part of a story rather than the therapist locking gazes with you and asking, “Have you considered…” Those few steps of removal often give us the courage to try something different. We may want different lives, but it’s threatening to move into uncharted waters.

Circling back to storytelling. Because of who we are, we’re attracted to certain things. One book will resonate for me that absolutely fails to touch someone else. And vice versa. So in much the same way I wasn’t the “right” therapist for everyone, I don’t expect my books to be a good fit for everyone who picks them up. No one’s are.

I’ve always loved to read. Now that I’ve discovered the magic in weaving a tale together, or sitting back and letting my characters talk “through “ me, I don’t think I’ll ever look back. And I’m ever so grateful to my readers for every scrap of feedback they’ve given me. I’ve learned so much from them. It sounds hokey, but not a day goes by that a reader doesn’t teach me something. And make me a better writer.

What do you look for in books? What draws you? Have you ever had an “aha” moment after reading something and gone out to do something about it? Tell me. I’d love to know.

Thank you Ann for stopping at Nomi's Paranormal Palace today and for your fabulous post!! Check out her Transformation Series below.

Psyche’s Prophecy

Book One of the Transformation Series

By Ann Gimpel

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.

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Psyche’s Search

Book Two of the Transformation Series

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 ARe

Books on Board   Gypsy Shadow Publishing

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Psyche’s Promise

Book Three of the Transformation Series

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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Gypsy Shadow Publishing

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Short Bio:

Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian bent.  Avocations include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness photography and, of course, writing.  A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies and she has published three novels, Psyche’s Prophecy, Psyche’s Search and Psyche’s Promise. A husband, grown children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out her family.

           

www.anngimpel.com

http://anngimpel.blogspot.com

http://www.amazon.com/author/anngimpel

http://www.facebook.com/anngimpel.author

https://twitter.com/#!/AnnGimpel

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