Today's special guest is KS Augustin."Kaz" loves
writing human stories, whether set on Earth or out among the stars.
Malaysian-born, she has travelled a goodly portion of the world and lived to
tell the tale! Her urban fantasy release, The Complete Check Your Luck Agency,
consists of five books, exploring the myths and legends of the melting-pot that
is south-east Asia. Come for the food, stay for the monsters! (Ghosts included
at no extra charge.)
As if all that's not enough, she's also
Chief Editor of the free online quarterly magazine, Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly.
http://www.scifiromancequarterly.org/
ON MYTHICAL CREATURES AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
I sit
here in south-east Asia, at the melting pot of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Arab
cultures, swirled with Portuguese, Dutch and British invasions, thinking of how
best to tell you about the creatures in my book, The Complete Check Your Luck Agency.
Unfortunately,
as many creatures had to be left out of the book as got into it, but let me
whet your appetite. While Western readers may have one image of a ghost,
south-east Asia has a variety. There's the kuttisaathan,
a ghost that haunts Hindu graveyards; the ghosts who receive no ancestor
worship, or hungry ghosts, of Chinese
mythology; and the hantu lubang, the
Malay ghost that inhabits caves and crevices, just to name three. We have
vampires, but they're exclusively female—women who have lost their lives during
childbirth. Thanks to the Arabs, we also have djinn, who are believed to guard the casinos in the region!
What
about elves, you ask, I bet you don't have them? On the contrary! They're
called orang bunian, the beautiful
people who can lure you to their kingdom. A day spent with them can translate
to a decade passing in the normal world. They can give you your heart's desire,
but are quick to punish if they feel they've been slighted in any way.
This is
the world that Ursula Formosa enters. The problem is, Ursula has paranormal
abilities but is determined to ignore them; until, that is, she can't. I know
I'm only her creator, but I get the feeling that Ursula deliberately joined
quirky The Check Your Luck Agency because, deep down inside, she really wanted
to get in touch with her psychic side. In any case, what she discovers is much
more than she expected and, if she and her new friends are going to live, she's
going to have to grow up fast and learn to work together with the strangest
group of people you've ever met.
Lastly,
several of the situations in the book have been things that have actually
happened to me, and all of them have been described to me by various locals. I
try to keep a sceptical mind about all this (much like Ursula, although I don't
have any of her powers), but something still scratches in the back of my mind.
Was that really the wind blowing through a coconut palm? Or was it the playful
breath of a lonely spirit?
I'd like
to welcome you to a different world—hot, sweltering, verdant, mysterious—and
hope you enjoy your stay there. I guarantee, it's different to what you're used
to.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
After the tragic death of her parents, and with nothing left tying
her to the United Kingdom, Ursula Formosa returns to her homeland and a job
with the eccentrically-named Singapore firm, “The Check Your Luck Agency”.
What begins as an attempt to stave off boredom turns into a new
way of life as the scales drop from Ursula’s eyes and she tentatively enters a
realm that contains vengeful ghosts, toyol, demons, pontianak and curses, not
to mention old-fashioned fraud and larceny. As she befriends bomohs, mediums
and a young woman already centuries old, Ursula’s ideas of friendship expand
into a fresh view of the world that surrounds her.
But she isn’t going to be left to ease into things. A criminal
mastermind, who is also a powerful sorcerer, is gathering mythical creatures to
help him possess every living soul in Singapore, and he isn’t about to let the
members of The Check Your Luck Agency stand in his way!
AN EXCERPT
“What
made you take a job with Fiona Li?”
“I think
it was Fiona who chose me,” I laughed. “She had the craziest ad in a newspaper
one weekend, and I was mulling my options at the time. It was a fortunate
confluence of circumstance, as she’d say.”
“You mean
you didn’t train to become a paranormal investigator?” he asked with a smile.
It dented his cheeks, giving him dimples to go with those liquid eyes, smooth
voice and engaging manner. I swallowed. I was in serious trouble.
“I don’t
see myself as a paranormal investigator,” I corrected him.
I knew
Fiona’s views on the Agency’s work and my own differed markedly, but I wasn’t
going to lie to the smooth-skinned, extremely handsome man seated across the
table from me.
“I’ll
admit I’m the sceptic of the company,” I began. “In fact, in every case I’ve
handled in the past six months, not a single one ended up being attributed to
supernatural causes.”
“Not
one?” He was clearly incredulous.
“I
certainly haven’t seen them,” I demurred. “So far, ten out of ten times, the
‘bad luck’ dogging our clients has been down to greedy relatives, unscrupulous
business practices or malicious ex-lovers.”
“Not one
case of hauntings or possession or things that go bump in the night? Not one
instance where you’ve seen something you can’t explain?”
Yes! Tell him!
I looked
him straight in the face. “No. Nothing like that at all.”
SPECIAL LINKS
Kaz's website is at
http://www.KSAugustin.com and a list of her books can also be found at
http://www.SandalPressOnline.com She occasionally tweets as @SandalPress
The Complete Check Your Luck Agency is
available from:
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IJZQ106
Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-complete-check-your-luck-agency-ks-augustin/1118612994?ean=9780987317483
The author will
be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the
tour.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:
