Interview with mystery author Kirsten Weiss

Mystery author Kirsten Weiss is chatting me about her new experimental mystery fiction, The Mysteries of Tarot.

During her virtual book tour, Kirsten will be giving away a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:
Kirsten Weiss writes laugh-out-loud, page-turning mysteries, and now a Tarot guidebook that’s a work of experimental fiction. Her heroes and heroines aren’t perfect, but they’re smart, they struggle, and they succeed. Kirsten writes in a house high on a hill in the Colorado woods and occasionally ventures out for wine and chocolate. Or for a visit to the local pie shop.

Kirsten is best known for her Wits’ End, Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum, and Tea & Tarot cozy mystery books. So, if you like funny, action-packed mysteries with complicated heroines, just turn the page…

Welcome, Kirsten. Please tell us about your current release.
The Mysteries of Tarot started out as a Tarot guidebook ostensibly written by a character from my Tea and Tarot cozy mystery series, Hyperion Night. But I couldn’t bring myself to just write a guidebook. I had to embed a mystery in it somehow. The premise is that Hyperion has sent his book on Tarot to a friend to edit. When he gets the manuscript back, he discovers a murder mystery in his editor’s notes, embedded in the footnotes to each card. So it’s both a practical (and hopefully fun) book on how to read Tarot, but it’s got a lot of levels to it—Hyperion’s practical take, his editor’s more esoteric and philosophical take, and the murder mystery which parallels the themes of each card.

What inspired you to write this book? It started out as pieces of flash “non” fiction for a class I was taking. By chance, one of the other students was a Tarot reader, and she thought I had the premise for a book. I decided she was right, and wrote it over the course of the next two years.

Excerpt from The Mysteries of Tarot:
Ace of Cups

New love. New relationship. Awakening of cosmic consciousness. Channel for spirit. Gratitude.

It’s a little depressing how often I’ve drawn the Ace of Cups. Aces are about beginnings and initiation, and cups about emotions and love. So for me this card has usually indicated a

new relationship, though not necessarily a lasting one. Until one day, when the relationship this Tarot card was nudging me toward had zero to do with romance.

I’d been reading Tarot for a couple years by that point. I knew the classic meanings, I could put them together, and I was even starting more intuitive work with clients. I was doing (and still do) my own daily Tarot card reading—just one card. That day, I’d drawn the Ace of Cups. And though I wasn’t expecting a good day, the Ace gave me a lift of hope.

Its meaning unfolded later that day. I was in the hospital visiting my aunt. We’d been taking her there on an almost weekly basis after a cancer diagnosis—I won’t go into the details. But she’d been coming down with one infection after another, with no end in sight.

I was bored, sitting outside the examination room. So although the spring day was drizzly, I wandered to the balcony garden outside. At the moment, the clouds parted, and a sunbeam struck the ocean. The light glimmered, the ocean whitening around it.

And suddenly, I knew. My aunt was going to be okay.

I returned inside. The doctor emerged from the exam room and told us my aunt was in remission.

It was my first knowing. My first true connection. Did I channel? Did I forge some connection with the universal mind?

I’m still baffled. Until that moment, the idea of awakening cosmic consciousness in myself had been entirely theoretical. There are some things you can’t entirely understand until you experience them.

I’m still not sure I do understand. I don’t have these moments of insight on tap. My knowings don’t come on command. But they do still occasionally come.

Aces. Someone once told me that the first card in the suit contains all the energy of that suit. In that moment at the hospital, I felt all the energy of the Cups—intuition, spirit, connection—flowing through me. I was initiated that day by something bigger than myself.

The Symbols

A golden chalice floats above a pool dotted with water lilies, the latter representing eternal life. Five streams (representing the five senses?) overflow from the cup.

The cup is commonly believed to represent the Holy Grail from Arthurian legend. In the story of the knight Parcival, a dove magically empowers the Grail, and in this card, a dove with a communion-type wafer dives toward the cup. The cup also resembles a baptismal font, implying a spiritual initiation.

What Does This Card Mean for You?

How can you be that over-flowing chalice? Because it’s by being loving that we attract love of all kinds to us.

Notes: Ace of Cups

85 Adelaide came to the cottage today with her latest rescue (a Chihuahua). She’d learned about my brother’s threatened conservatorship and wants to help. I’m grateful.

She told me Charles has been trying to get more control of our father’s company for years. I had no idea it mattered to him that much. He’s been the Chief Financial Officer since last spring. I’d assumed he was on track to take the company over, and I would have been happy to let him. I don’t care about managing the money or the company. But I don’t want to be on an allowance at my brother’s mercy either. At least my sister, for all her faults, is on my side.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’m working on four stories in my Paranormal Museum cozy mystery series—two short reads and two novels. The first, a short read, is Deadly Divination, and comes out June 30^th. The next, a full-length mystery, is Dead End Donation, and launches at the end of July.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
It took a while. I think when a fellow writer emailed me to let me know I was being discussed as a good example of a cozy mystery writer at a writing seminar she’d attended. The sad thing is that was only a year ago, and I’ve been writing professionally since 2012!

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do write full-time. I have a strict schedule. I start writing at 7:30 AM and finish a draft of one chapter usually by nine o’clock. Then I do tai chi. Then I edit a different book. Then in the afternoon I work on the business side of writing.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I’m what you could call a speed writer. I write fast and write badly, and then I spend a LOT of time editing!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a mystery writer! Achievement unlocked!

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I think this book is best to read The Mysteries of Tarot in paperback, because paperbacks that you can consult and dogear and highlight seem to make better guidebooks. And the footnotes with the editor’s commentary and mystery “flow” better on paper. I did, however, create an ebook version. In that, the editor’s notes appear as separate chapters, so they’re easier to read. (Footnotes in ebooks are kind of a pain).

Links:
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