Thursday, May 5, 2016

Blog Tour: Supernatural Freak by Louisa Klein


When paranormal expert Robyn Wise is offered an outrageous sum of money to cure a boy who is turning into a dead tree, she's very sceptical. A politician ready to pay that much to make his son stop growing branches instead of hair? Come on! She's more likely to be abducted by aliens. This is a trap. Or much worse. And, of course, it's much worse.

The child is turning into a dark portal, created by a powerful entity determined to absorb Fairyland's power. This means that not only queen Titania and her court are in danger, but the very balance of the magic fluxes.

Robyn'd rather stick a pencil in her own eye but, to learn how to destroy the portal, she has to sneak into the Wizardry Council, a place full of wizards who are hiding something—though it’s certainly not their dislike of her.

There, she discovers a terrible secret that could help to overthrow Fairyland's enemies for good, but puts her in the midst of an ancient and deadly war, and not as a bystander, but as the main target.


Top 7 Facts the author wants readers to know about Supernatural Freak

1)         In early 2009, I dreamt about a boy turning into a tree. The dream was kind of blurry and it left me with a lot of questions: who was the boy? What kind of spell was transforming him? The answers were that the boy was the son of a very powerful person, like a prominent politician, and that the tree was actually a dark portal. Still, I was clueless about the boy’s saviour. She came to me in another dream, a few weeks later. She wore old jeans and snickers, was skinny and didn’t look like much but God if she could fight! I had found my heroine.

2)         I started writing Supernatural Freak right after I broke up with my long-term boyfriend. He insisted I wasn't good enough to write a book and I was very eager to prove him wrong.

3) My ex and I lived together. Once I broke up with him I was homeless and could afford only to live in shared houses. I moved six times while I was writing the book, dragging around not only my regular luggage but what I called my 'supernatural bag', which was an old, huge satchel filled with notebooks and chaotic pieces of papers containing the first draft of my first book.

4) I wrote the majority of the first part of Supernatural Freak in a Star Bucks, two blocks away where I was living. My favourite table was the one near the window, since I hate artificial light and said window was huge. After a while Linda, a mature waitress working there started calling it my "writing table". Whenever I showed up, she would wink at me and say: "Your writing table is free, love, hurry up!". She ended up being my very first fan, she was the very first person who downloaded Supernatural Freak from Amazon ... THANK YOU, LINDA!

5)         I am allergic to a number of substances and one of them is alcohol. I can drink only a very limited amount of it, like half a glass of wine, not more, or I get very sick. Nevertheless, when I finally finished Supernatural Freak, I was so excited that I invited my flatmates to the pub and 'get drunk'. I mean, finishing my first book was the biggest accomplishment of my life, so screw my allergies! For once, I wanted to be like anyone else. That's why I ordered a whole pint of beer which was, well, kind of daring. Reckless. OK, just plain crazy. What happened is that I drank the beer and then ... Who knows. I have a blurry memory of me vomiting into the pub's toilet and then nothing. All I know, is that I woke up in my bed the next, with the mother of all hangovers. I had to deal with a massive headache and sickness for over a day and with being teased by my flatmates for the rest of my life. I had become the joke of the house, my flatmates all being strong drinkers! Bottom line is: to celebrate the release of Supernatural Fog, I went to the cinema and drank a coke!  

6)         Martino, Robyn’s scruffy smallish dog, really existed: He was my rescue dog. I say ‘was’ because he sadly passed away last February. Martino was the kindest, most sensitive, the bravest and most profound person I’ve ever met. I say ‘person’ because he was much, much more than human. He died after having fought all his life against a painful chronic condition which was the result of him being by a criminal when he was a puppy. I had the honour to spend ten years with him and to grow-up with him by my side, he was and always will be my forever inspiration.


7) The character of Susan, a prominent and powerful witch who’s one of Robyn’s best friends, is very much inspired by children author and illustrator Suzy Jane Tanner (http://www.suzy-jane.com), a very talented and kind lady who sort of adopted me since I moved to the UK for good.

Excerpt:
CHAPTER 1
Stood up by the shaman

Faced with being alone in the middle of nowhere at night, the true Londoner doesn’t lose her head but takes a deep breath, smoothes her jacket, and goes in search of a bobby or a black cab. Only foreigners freak out in such circumstances. Londoners, on the other hand, being the most British of all British people, never ever freak out. Still, when you are a paranormal expert who’s in a deserted area of the Docks and are supposed to heal a werewolf with the aid of a shaman who hasn’t shown up, I’m afraid the only reasonable reaction is to…

“Run!” Mr Wilson growls, getting worryingly hirsute. He has a point. A skinny girl in her twenties is no match for a werewolf, and I don’t think that telling him I’m a dog person would make much of a difference. Trouble is that he’s standing between me and my car, so my only option is to run in the opposite direction. My feet sink into the sand of the Thames’ shore, the river a creepy black ribbon untouched by the full moon’s rays. It takes what looks like ages to cross the sand and reach the building site a hundred yards away. I should have never trusted that damn shaman. How could I have been so stupid? A long howl fills the air. My client has now fully transformed. In a second he will pick up my scent and hunt me down. 
About the Author
Louisa Klein lives in the UK but was born in Germany and brought up in Southern Europe by a German dad and an Italian and French mum, which made her a little confused at first. She has a degree in Medieval Studies and a postgraduate one in Marketing. She’s been working in publishing on and off since she was 17 and currently is a freelancer and an Urban Fantasy writer. At night she puts on a mask and fights British crime. She gets very little sleep.

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