Author Spotlight: Q & A with Emily Paper
TJ: Hello! Welcome to Author Spotlight where both new and veteran authors share a little about themselves and their work. Today we have Emily Paper, creator of Applied Divination and author. Let’s get into it. Care to tell readers us about yourself, Emily?
Emily: Hi, thanks for the welcome. I’m your biggest fan!
I grew up in Canada and only moved to the States about 14 years ago. I have three amazig kiddos (19, 18, and 17) and while they were growing up I worked in and out of the Seattle tech industry as technical editor and marketing copywriter. Now that they’re off to college I’ve started practicing my real passions. I am now the author of fortune-telling manuals, I’m working on a Master’s degree in nonfiction writing, and I work my own hours as a feng shui expert and divination consultant.
TJ: What inspired you to get into writing?
Emily: I’ve been writing longer than I’ve been reading, I think. My first book was called “colour” and it was just a bunch of pieces of paper folded together. Each page had whatever color I could spell written on it. Blue was written as “bleu” - I tell people that’s because I’m Canadian and so therefore part French, but really it’s because I was three years old and couldn’t spell. I think the other colors were red, green, and porple - also a misspelling.
In my later childhood I loved Choose Your Own Adventures, so I would write a bunch of those myself and force my Mom to read every possible path while I watched her face. I’m sure it drove her nuts, but luckily those books only had a few pages in them so it didn’t take long.
My teenage years were rife with journaling. I journaled at least a page every day. My mother actually kept the damn things and sent them to me a year ago. I think it may have been vengeance for forcing her to read my earlier adventure novels. According to my journals my teenage years were dramatic, emo, love-crazy, and totally lame.
T.J.: Do you read work similar to your own or do you read a broad range of works?
Emily: Great question. I read what I write, but not what I publish. Something little known about me (although you know, TJ, because we write in the same groups!) is that I am obsessed with mysteries – cosy, thriller, suspense, and everything in between. I love them and read them almost exclusively, and I write a new mystery story at least once or twice a year. However, none of my mysteries have ever been published. Even though fiction is what I write the most, sadly I haven’t published any of it*. Yet. Maybe 2021 will be my year!
I do publish divination nonfiction and I read some of that for research. My favorite genre will always be mysteries, though.
*I did self-publish one really lame 8,000-word erotic fantasy in 2015 under a super fake name, and never talked about it since and never will again. I earn about ten cents every year from random people stumbling upon it, and that’s fine. I will never advertise it because it’s so cringe.
T.J.: If you could meet someone famous living or dead, who would that be and why?
Emily: Agatha Christie, for sure. She was a prolific mystery-writing hero in a time when everything was typewriter-ed and misogynist. She dealt with cheating spouses and mental breakdowns and all the other terrible things women had to survive, and yet she ran circles in mysteries, mainstream fiction, plays, and theatre. Meanwhile, I have comparatively much more free time and I can barely push out a blog most days.
Crap, I forgot to blog today. BRB.
Back. I blogged about Hagalaz, the rune of chaos and bad weather. It is my familiar. http://emilypaper.com/blog/the-rune-hagalaz
Anyway, I’d love to share a tea with Agatha and pick her brain about life in the early 20th century, how to be amazing, where she disappeared to when she suffered a possible nervous breakdown (and did she, though? Or was she in a fugue state? Or the even better theory: was she merely trying to frame her ex-husband for murder? I am totally for that and I want tips!)
T.J: You have a series called The Applied Divination. Can you tell us about these books?
Emily: The Applied Divination series are books that provide practical and straightforward answers to everyday questions, but using ancient and otherwise obfuscated divination tools. For example, the first book in my series, Applied Tarot, uses the Tarot cards to help you make everyday decisions (such as “what should I have for lunch?” or “what movie should we watch this weekend?”)
You could use Tarot cards to predict your future or give you deep and insightful meaning to your life’s purpose, or you can use them to help you find your eyeglasses you misplaced yesterday. Your choice! If you want the deep insights, there are many different resources for that. If you want to find your eyeglasses, read Applied Tarot.
My second book, Applied Runes, does the same thing but with the ancient Norse oracle. It also includes a chapter on creating your own Runes, or which materials you may want your Runes to be created from. But really the most helpful part about Applied Runes is that together with my Runes, it tells me what color to paint my nails today.
This Spring I’ll have more related fun content in the same series – I’m releasing a psychic word puzzle book. When you solve one of the puzzles in the book, a message from the universe will be revealed to you! It’s like finishing a word search but with a fortune teller in the same room. 😉
Psychic Word Puzzles should be available on Amazon by March. Follow my author page to keep an eye out for that: https://www.amazon.com/Emily-Paper/e/B08HL7JXZM/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1
TJ: I own Applied Tarot and Applied Runes I'm looking forward to the release of Psychic Word Puzzles. Thank you for visiting my blog. Hope to have you back again!
Emily: Thanks so much for having me! I can’t wait to read Warrior Tithe and I’m so happy to share my own magical fantasy work with you and your friends here.
And now you’re wondering if nonfiction can even be considered magical fantasy. I definitely think so! I have a lot of fun living in my own fantastical reality every day. I hope you all do, too. Stay well!
Where to follow Emily Paper:
Website/blog: http://emilypaper.com/blog.html
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/emilypaperwrites
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AppliedTarot
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherlockthegreatbernard/ (alright look, this insta clearly is a dog and not anything related to divination, but I hate insta and my dog Sherlock loves it. Follow him, not me.)
Applied Tarot: https://amzn.to/36CLBTp
Applied Runes: https://amzn.to/3cLagtb
Interview ©T..J. Deschamps 2021
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