Guest Post by Laura Bickle: I love a good showdown, don’t you?

High Noon at the Tree of Life
By Laura Bickle

I love a good showdown, don’t you?

For the final book in the Wildlands series, I needed to write a proper showdown at high noon to bring this weird western adventure to a close. The stakes are high, and not everyone will walk away from the last fight for Temperance, Wyoming.

Here are the players, armed to the magical gills:

Petra Dee. This geologist and former skeptic has been forced to believe in the supernatural. She’s acquired a coyote sidekick who may or may not have a bit of the Coyote with a capital “C” behind his luminous eyes. And magic has even allowed her to cheat death…she’s discarded her dying body in favor of a shiny new doppelganger form, courtesy of a homunculus cooked up in the local bartender’s basement. She’s made an uneasy truth with magic, but magic may not have made a truce with her.

Gabriel. The last of the undead cowboys, the Hanged Men, Gabe married Petra during a temporary period of mortality. When he isn’t taking the form of a conspiracy of ravens in the sky, he’s regenerating beneath the alchemical Tree of Life. The more he’s steeped in magic, the more distant he grows from Petra…a divide that may put both of them at risk.

The phoenix. The back country of Yellowstone is burning, and the culprit is a phoenix who seems determined to raze anything in its path. The phoenix years to complete its final alchemical process, to join with another source of magical power. In the meantime, the tiny town of Temperance, the nearby reservation, and the ranch on which the alchemical Tree of Life sits are in the line of fire.

The Tree of Life. The alchemical Tree of Life has lost almost all of its children. The Hanged Men are buried for good. Only Gabriel remains, and the tree has grown grasping and jealous, threatening to take Petra as one of its undead children…whether she wants to go or not. Its leaves quake in terror at the coming of the phoenix. Fire is its only true fear, and it will do anything to keep from burning to the ground.

The alchemist, Lascaris. The founder of Temperance has been thought to be dead for more than a century. But he’s found a way back from the spirit world, a means to return to Temperance. If Lascaris summons the phoenix and succeeds in joining with it, he will gain immortal power beyond his imagining, and his wickedness will rule the land again.

Pigin, an atavistic spirit of rot and decay. Pigin has lived on this land for millennia, poisoned once upon a time by Lascaris’s alchemical experiments. He’s been locked in a battle of darkness and light with the phoenix. This time, if he wins, he’ll bring death and ruin upon Temperance.

It’s high noon, and the red sky is choked with smoke. Fire is coming, and the players are converging upon the Tree of Life. Who will be left standing when the dust clears?

Phoenix Falling: A Wildlands Novel (Dark Alchemy #5) 

by Laura Bickle
February 26, 2019
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
ISBN-10: 0062567357
ISBN-13: 978-0062567352
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Horror,
Dark Fantasy, PNR, Paranormal Fantasy
Laura Bickle, the critically acclaimed author of Nine of Stars and Witch Creek, returns with a fiery new chapter in her celebrated Wildlands series.

In the Yellowstone backcountry, a merciless source of evil carries a torch for the past…

Petra Dee and her immortal husband, Gabe, have been trying to gain a toehold in what passes for ordinary life in Temperance, Wyoming—

a wickedly enchanted land founded generations ago by the alchemist, Lascaris. Petra may be adept when it comes to the uncanny, but as a reasoned geologist, Petra still can’t fathom the wildfires suddenly engulfing Yellowstone National Park, or why Gabe claims to have seen the sky explode in flames. The answers could lie in the past.

It was a dreadful night in 1862 when Lascaris went harvesting for souls, only to be set upon by townsfolk determined to eliminate the root of all evil in a trial by fire. Petra can’t help fearing that Lascaris has crawled out of the ashes of history to wreak vengeance—and to complete his mission by claiming every vulnerable soul in Temperance.

With the help of Gabe and her coyote sidekick, Sig, Petra must now venture into Lascaris’s shadow before he turns her world into an inferno burning out of control.

“Bickle is well on her way to establishing her work as a cornerstone of her genre.”
—Publishers Weekly

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About the Author:

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Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology – Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs, also writing contemporary fantasy novels under the name Alayna Williams.
Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.

The Top Ten Wild Things in the Weird West

The Top Ten Wild Things in the Weird West

By Laura Bickle

The west is weird in DARK ALCHEMY. Long-buried alchemical experiments surface to meet the local undead, warring with drug lords and cattle barons in the tiny town of Temperance. It’s an odd place…as the new stranger in town, geologist Petra Dee, is discovering. These are the top ten things this scientist can’t rationally explain away:

10. Calcinated bodies. A series of corpses are found, twisted like driftwood and calcinated in shallow graves. There are no witnesses, and the manner of death defies all logical explanation.

9. Raven spies. Ravens are thick in the skies around Temperance. They’re often seen in the company of the local undead, the Hanged Men. Many suspect that the ravens are the familiars of the Hanged Men, but the truth is much more sinister, as they seem to watch events unfold with an almost-human intelligence.

8. Phone calls with the dead. Petra came to Temperance to search for her missing father. While driving her truck, she hears his voice on the radio, warning her to run away. This is no radio deejay with a twisted sense of humor – she receives several rambling phone calls from her dad, and the calls are traced to the middle of the ocean. Not possible – but the disembodied voice knows things only her father could know.

7. The Eye of the World. Stained a glorious shade of turquoise by algae, this pool of water is said to be a window to the spirit world. Petra drinks from the pool – and falls headfirst into a hallucination about her missing father.

6. The Garden. In alchemy, the Alchemical Garden is the place in which the puzzle of immortal life is unraveled. In Temperance, the Garden is a dilapidated field around the local meth dealer’s house. This is the place where blood is drawn and hallucinations are made real.

5. The Venificus Locus. The founder of Temperance was an alchemist, back in the Gold Rush days. Remnants of his experiments are buried throughout the countryside. Petra finds a golden compass on the property she’s renting, and it’s more than a pretty artifact. It has the ability to detect magic, and it runs on fresh blood.

4. Coyote familiars. The only creature Petra can trust is a coyote who turns up at the doorstep of her trailer. It seems that the coyote is more interested in lunch meat than companionship, but the coyote has his own agenda. He’s meant to be Petra’s spirit guide, whether she believes in spirit guides or not.

3. Living mercury. Stroud, the local drug lord, does more than cook meth in the garden. He’s obsessed with the secret of eternal life, and he’s conjured several horrors to solidify his power. One of these is living mercury, bonded with his own blood. The mercury is armor, a weapon, and so much more.

2. The Lunaria. The alchemical Tree of Life is real, and it stands alone in a field owned by a ruthless cattle baron. Its roots twist deep into the earth, and its branches brush the sky. At the center of an underground warren of tunnels that reach into the very depths of the earth, the Lunaria guards the secret of the Hanged Men.

1. The Hanged Men. The local undead, the Hanged Men masquerade as ranch hands. Forever in the company of ravens, they must return to the Lunaria every night to decompose and be reborn. The magic of the Lunaria isn’t perfect – many of the Hanged Men are little more than broken automatons. But they will defend the tree against any incursion – whether from Stroud or Petra. Are they responsible for the murders? Or is something even more fearsome at work? Petra will have to puzzle it out…or risk becoming the latest victim in this string of weird horrors rooted in Temperance.

Read I Smell Sheep's 

5 sheep review of Dark Alchemy

Dark Alchemy 
By: Laura Bickle
Pages: 271
Urban Fantasy
Some secrets are better left buried...
Geologist Petra Dee arrives in Wyoming seeking clues to her father's disappearance years ago. What she finds instead is Temperance, a dying western town with a gold rush past and a meth-infested present. But under the dust and quiet, an old power is shifting. When bodies start turning up—desiccated and twisted skeletons that Petra can't scientifically explain—her investigations land her in the middle of a covert war between the town's most powerful interests. Petra's father wasn't the only one searching for the alchemical secrets of Temperance, and those still looking are now ready to kill. Armed with nothing but shaky alliances, a pair of antique guns, and a relic she doesn't understand, the only thing Petra knows for sure is that she and her coyote sidekick are going to have to move fast—or die next.

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, HarperCollins, Google Play, and Kobo

About the Author:
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Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology – Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs, also writing contemporary fantasy novels under the name Alayna Williams.

Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.

Book Review: Dark Alchemy by Laura Bickle

Dark Alchemy
By: Laura Bickle
Pages: 271
Urban Fantasy
Plot:
Some secrets are better left buried …

Geologist Petra Dee arrives in Wyoming seeking clues to her father's disappearance years ago. What she finds instead is Temperance, a dying western town with a gold rush past and a meth-infested present. But under the dust and quiet, an old power is shifting. When bodies start turning up—desiccated and twisted skeletons that Petra can't scientifically explain—her investigations land her in the middle of a covert war between the town's most powerful interests. Petra's father wasn't the only one searching for the alchemical secrets of Temperance, and those still looking are now ready to kill. Armed with nothing but shaky alliances, a pair of antique guns, and a relic she doesn't understand, the only thing Petra knows for sure is that she and her coyote sidekick are going to have to move fast—or die next.

The one and only thing this story could have possibly needed? More pages!?

Laura Bickle has once again brought me to my knees. I wish she would stop, I'm getting to old to bounce back up! Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a big fan of UF. The genera as a whole is lacking all kinds of romance and sex, it's fact and I have zero love life. So romance I need! But regardless of the lacking personal love life this reader has, I frelin loved this story!

The first chapter starts out dark and mysterious, you get a really great feeling of what's to come. The suspense only builds from there as you meet some freaky ranch hands that could use some badly needed days off. Overworked and not paid a dime, I would have run for the hills years ago. But in walks Petra and out walks anything normal or mundane they were used to.

She's spitfire, sass and gusto all wrapped up in a loving heart. Once she makes a decision on someone's character, she stops at nothing to protect and look out for that person. She is flawed and even though life has not thrown her rainbows and kisses, this chick gets back up and keeps moving forward.

Her handy coyote sidekick is one lovable guy, where this story takes them in future books is sure to be amazing. It's dark and twisted with magics, evil is all around you and finding out the endless stream of gibber gabber to uncover it all was one hell of a ride! Every element of this tale had just what the reader needed and some added surprises you can chew on after the dusts settles. What's going to happen with Petra and Gabe, I guess we will need to find out in future books!

If you love reading a well thought out mystery, laced with darkness and magics while set to the country backdrop then grab this one and dive in!

Getting 5 Sheep
KD

About the Author:
website-FB-twitter
Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology – Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs, also writing contemporary fantasy novels under the name Alayna Williams.

Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.