Supernatural Central Short and Quick Interview
Today our guest is K.R. Gastreich, the author of Soul Masters. Welcome!1. Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
Mayela, protagonist of Soul Masters, is a career ecologist. She loves plants and animals and anything outdoors. She also enjoys good coffee and spending time with friends.
Mayela lost her husband to a tragic accident a few years ago. Since then she has struggled with finding renewed meaning in life.
One day, Mayela stumbles across the veil and discovers a world where immortal beings hunt souls. One of the soul masters offers his protection, at a price. Mayela enters a showdown of minds, hearts, and supernatural abilities.
Can she outwit the soul masters before they destroy her, body and soul?
2. Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
I believe there is something greater than ourselves at work in the world. I also believe there are many aspects of the universe that are beyond our sensory perception. Most of us experience this as the spiritual or the supernatural.
We may eventually find scientific explanations for everything we label supernatural - or we may not.
I’ve had some interesting mystical experiences over the years, but I’m also a scientist. The ever-present tension between mystical me and science me is part of what generated the book Soul Masters.
3. What titles are you working on now that you can tell us about?
One project I’m working on is the Ankala Oracle. This divinatory deck delivers mystical meanings through a pictorial history of the Ankala, a fictional people from the World of Faelon. While based on an imagined world, the Ankala Oracle invokes ancient wisdom that I’m confident will inform any divinatory practice.
I’m really excited about this project. It’s opened up a whole new dimension of storytelling and mystical exploration for me. I’m developing the oracle in collaboration with DGS Games, with illustrations by the incomparable artist Nio. We’ll be launching the Ankala Oracle this year.
I’m also working on a sequel to Soul Masters - which I know readers will be hungry for after reading the first book!
Interested in learning more? Please follow me on Instagram or Facebook.
Excerpt:
Then everything froze. Joni, the customers, the cars outside. All movement simply stopped. The chime on the front door sounded. My throat went dry. Somehow, I knew what was happening. I knew who had arrived, though I didn’t understand how or why.
Twisting around, I peered over the rim of the booth. Standing in the doorway was the man from my hallucinations, a creature of the dark plains. Tall and slim, broad-shouldered, dark in aspect. That same man had beheaded a snake in my kitchen. Not my kitchen, I reminded myself. The illusion of my kitchen, part of the same hallucination of an impossible world. The Hunting Grounds, he’d called it. Where we go to hunt souls.My mind spun with the impossibility of what I was seeing. He couldn’t be real. Yet here he was, in Joni’s shop. Except, he looked different. His hair was peppered gray instead of black. His skin seemed a shade darker. Or maybe lighter? It was like wrapping my head around a mirage, trying to remember what he looked like in my nightmares. But the simple force of his presence, the quiet luminescence of his spirit, was unmistakable. That was him.
Without so much as a glance in my direction, the man stepped into the shop and started toward the counter. Everything stirred at once. Several people looked his way. Joni let go a long, low whistle.“Well, I’ll be!” she exclaimed. "We haven’t had anyone that drop-dead gorgeous walk in here since…Well, ever!”
She kept staring, mouth agape, as he ordered coffee. Then her face lit up, and she jumped into action, wiping down the table next to me.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “I think you should go for him.”
“What?” I croaked.
“He’s totally your style.”
“I don’t date men in suits.”
“What are you talking about?” She laughed. “Look at him! It’s fate. I can feel it.”
“Joni –”
“Sir!” She called. “Sir, we’ve got an empty table right over here. Next to the windows.”
Holy crap! I sank deeper into my seat. “I’m serious, Joni! Send him somewhere else.”
“Straighten up, beautiful.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Give it a shot. What’ve you got to lose?”
Then she was gone. I cast about frantically for an escape, but there was no back exit from the booth. Unless I wanted to crash through the window. Could I do that? Crash through the window?
Yeah, I could do that. But I’d have to leave my insects behind, and –
And there he was, taking the table next to me. His chair scraped against the floor. His clothes rustled as he settled in. Minutes passed while my heart pounded inside my chest. I kept my face turned, pretended to stare out the window, wondered whether it would hurt to feel the glass shatter against my skin.Idle talk filled the coffee shop. Customers came and went, orders were taken, steam forced through frothing milk.
Still the man said nothing.
I snuck a glance in his direction. Damn, he was handsome. Heart stoppingly so. Desire tugged at my gut, a strangely familiar sense of attraction, as if we’d known each other before this moment. As if I’d been bound to him in a time before memory.
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