Tuesday, October 24, 2017

BLOG TOUR & AUTHOR INTERVIEW with K.C. Tansley for "The Girl Who Saved Ghosts (The Unbelievables, #2)"

The Girl Who Saved Ghosts 
(The Unbelievables, #2)
by K.C. Tansley
Publication date: October 17th, 2017
Genres: Mystery, Time-Travel,
Young Adult
She tried to ignore them. Now she might risk everything to save them. 
After a summer spent in a haunted castle—a summer in which she traveled through time to solve a murder mystery—Kat is looking forward to a totally normal senior year at McTernan Academy. Then the ghost of a little girl appears and begs Kat for help, and more unquiet apparitions follow. All of them are terrified by the Dark One, and it soon becomes clear that that this evil force wants Kat dead. 
Searching for help, Kat leaves school for the ancestral home she’s only just discovered. Her friend Evan, whose family is joined to her own by an arcane history, accompanies her. With the assistance of her eccentric great aunts and a loyal family ghost, Kat soon learns that she and Evan can only fix the present by traveling into the past. 
As Kat and Evan make their way through nineteenth-century Vienna, the Dark One stalks them, and Kat must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice to save a ghost.

~AUTHOR INTERVIEW with K.C. Tansley~

1) What gave you the inspiration for the storyline?

Since this is a series, Book 1 really laid the groundwork for Book 2. In Book 1, Kat reunited the Radcliffes with their family heirloom, so the next step was to reunite the Kingsleys with their heirloom. The heirlooms are amulets that make each family powerful, so I needed the heirlooms to be lost at different times, causing each family to slowly become weakened. I decided on the early 1800s for the Kingsley dagger to disappear. The time period came into focus as I researched Vienna more.

Why Vienna? Well, I went to Austria in 2009 for a week and fell in love with the art, culture, history, and cuisine. In Book 1, Kat and Evan time-travel to 1886 Connecticut. This time, I wanted them to go somewhere more historic that they could really geek out over. Vienna during the Austro-Hungarian Empire was it. Of course, I had to do research on what Vienna in 1831 would be like. I had a lot of fun discovering that!

2) Are there any hidden themes in the book that you hope readers will discover?

The book explores the concept of family—those you are born with and those you choose. For Kat, she never knew her father’s side of the family. It left a hole in her heart and an uncertainty about who she is. She’s got amazing friends and they help fill that void. But she still yearns for the part of her family that rejected her. I think it’s a very basic need—to know where you come from and to feel a part of it.

3) Are any of the characters based on real people you know?

I definitely drew from my experiences in college. Georgetown University has a diverse student body, and I wanted to have characters that reflected the world I lived in. So my inspiration for the characters started with my own background and my friends’ backgrounds. Kat’s the descendant of Russian immigrants on her mom’s side, just like I am. My best friend in college is from Texas with Mexican and Native American roots and she is a jumping off point for Morgan. Evan was inspired by a friend who is of Vietnamese and Irish descent. Seth is Irish and Argentine and was inspired by a few friends.

On the surface, Kat and I look similar—blonde hair, green eyes, wear glasses, tall, and curvy. It felt easier to write someone who was more like me for my first attempt at fiction. She’s very smart and school focused, which I was at her age too.

4) Who has influenced you most as a writer?

I was reading Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series during editorial revisions and was influenced by the amount of visuals and the smoothness of her storytelling. I saw each book unfold in my mind as I read it and I strove to deliver that same experience to my readers. Richelle Mead’s pacing from the Vampire Academy series also impacted my writing.

Reading the Amanda Quick historic romances during the 1990s influenced my desire to write family sagas with historic estates and family heirlooms.

As a kid, I loved Edgar Allen Poe stories, which probably contributes to the creepy, supernatural stuff in my stories. And Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights gave me a taste for the haunting love story that plays out between the Langleys and the Kingsleys over the centuries. 

5) If you could have any three literary characters over to your place for game night, who would you invite, what would you play, what would you serve, and why?

I’d invite some fun sidekicks from books because it’s game night and we aren’t going into battle, so MJ from K.R. Conway’s Undertow series, Eve from Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampire series, and Magnus from Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series. We’d play Clue because that is my favorite game.  It’s game night, so I’d have snacks for picking at while we played like chips and guac and salsa. Cheetos. Maybe cheese and pepperoni too. If it’s a marathon of games, we’d order some authentic Chinese food too. Magnus would be able to conjure it straight from Shanghai.

Author Bio:
K.C. Tansley lives with her warrior lapdog, Emerson, and two quirky golden retrievers on a hill somewhere in Connecticut. She tends to believe in the unbelievables—spells, ghosts, time travel—and writes about them. 
Never one to say no to a road trip, she’s climbed the Great Wall twice, hopped on the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, and danced the night away in the dunes of Cape Hatteras. She loves the ocean and hates the sun, which makes for interesting beach days. The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts is her award-winning and bestselling first novel in The Unbelievables series. 
As Kourtney Heintz, she also writes award winning cross-genre fiction for adults. 
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2 comments:

  1. Thanks for being on the tour! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for these great interview questions and for being part of my blog tour!

    ReplyDelete