‘Good morning, Psychic Surveys. How can I help?’

The latest in a long line of psychically-gifted females, Ruby Davis, can see through the veil that separates this world and the next, helping grounded souls to move towards the light – or ‘home’ as Ruby calls it. Not just a job for Ruby, it’s a crusade and one she wants to bring to the High Street.

Psychic Surveys is born.

Psychics on Main Street? Tell us more.
Based in Lewes, East Sussex, Ruby and her team of freelance psychics have been kept busy of late. Specialising in domestic cases, their solid reputation is spreading – it’s not just the dead that can rest in peace but the living too. All is threatened when Ruby receives a call from the irate new owner of Highdown Hall. Film star, Cynthia Hart, is still in residence, despite having died in 1958.

Winter deepens and so does the mystery surrounding Cynthia. She insists the devil is blocking her path to the light long after Psychic Surveys have ‘disproved’ it. Investigating her apparently unblemished background, Ruby is pulled further and further into Cynthia’s world and the darkness that now inhabits it.

For the first time in her career, Ruby’s deepest beliefs are challenged. Does evil truly exist? And if so, is it the most relentless force of all?

Is this a horror novel?
It’s a paranormal mystery.

If you like James Herbert, you’ll love my book.

All characters are based on people, including psychics that I know and all events are based on either experience or word of mouth experience.

Really? Tell us more about these characters then.
Ruby Davis is 24 and a psychic. She has been brought up to believe it is her ‘duty’ to help earthbound spirits move on. To this end she has set up Psychic Surveys, a bona fide high street business, specialising in domestic spiritual disturbance. Her aim is to normalise the paranormal, to remove the taboo, opening PS offices eventually up and down the country.

Kind of like Walmart or Tesco? Interesting. Tell us who’s in her team.
Cash Wilkins is a computer expert – a world as mysterious to Ruby as the paranormal is to some. Although not a psychic, he quickly becomes a vital part of the team.

The rest of the team consist of Corinna, aged 21 and a ‘sensitive’, Theo, in her late sixties and well-established in the field and Ness, who used to work in a psychic capacity for Sussex Police. Jed – a ghost dog who has attached itself to Ruby during a cleansing, also proves himself very useful.

We know that this is the start of a series, and are quite excited about seeing where it goes. Have you written any other books?
My debut book, The Runaway Year, was published in June 2013 and is a contemporary romance. It’s sequel, The Runaway Ex,  is due out this year too.

Tell us about yourself.
I live in Brighton with my husband and three children. After graduating from Sussex University in the early 1990s, I became a freelance copywriter. Today the day job also involves crafting novels.

Do you have a website?
www.shanistruthers.com

And social media?
@Shani_struthers
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shani-Struthers-Author/318842441568025? ref=hl.

What’s next?
Next is a stand-alone paranormal mystery set in the highlands of Scotland, entitled Jessamin(e) and the sequel to Psychic Surveys Book One.

How easily do new storylines come to you? If we give you four random words – Man, Woman, Mexico, Future – can you give us a brief storyline?
A woman walks into a travel agent in the high street with dreams of escaping the bitter English weather. Sunny shores in a far off country beckon. Straightaway a man greets her, invites her to take a seat. He is young, handsome, exotic even, his face not winter pale but a healthy caramel colour, his dark brown eyes liquid.

I want to escape, she says.
Most people do, he replies amicably.
Any recommendations?
I’m going back to Mexico soon. It’s nice there. It’s home. I think you’d like it.

She mulls over his words. Mexico? she says at last. Sounds good. Fancy some company?

Outside the rain continues to beat mercilessly against the windows but she doesn’t mind a bit. For her, the future just got a whole lot brighter.