We chat with author Finley Turner about The Tarot Reader, which follows a phony psychic vision that goes wrong when a woman unexpectedly finds herself involved in a murder investigation, perfect for fans of May Cobb and Catherine McKenzie. PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the interview!
Hi, Finley! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m originally from Virginia but I’ve been living in North Carolina now for over a decade. I originally thought I wanted to be a professor, so I got a graduate degree in religious studies focusing on cults and religious violence, but once I was put in front of the classroom, I shifted my focus to behind-the-scenes of academia and became a university archivist. My debut novel and debut child were born into the world at the same time and now I parent and write full time. In my spare time I love playing video games and riding around our neighborhood on our golf cart with my family.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I always loved to read, but my high school English teacher made me realize I enjoyed writing as much as reading. We had an assignment to write a pastiche of The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat and I still think about how excited I was for my teacher to read it when I turned it in. Was it good? Probably not. Did I love it? Absolutely.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: I remember being so obsessed with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice series that I wrote her a letter as a young girl. To my surprise, she sent back a signed poster and it blew my mind.
- The one that made you want to become an author: I’m sure there are many, but The Thirteenth Taleby Diane Setterfield made me want to create something like that.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I read The Last Word by Taylor Adams last summer and I still think about it at least once a week.
Your latest novel, The Tarot Reader, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Spooky, haywire, pseudo-spiritual, tense, and cunning
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect to be challenged by main characters who are good people at their core, but they can’t help but do bad things.
Where did the inspiration for The Tarot Reader come from?
When my mom died in 2022, I would wake in the middle of the night to feed my baby and get sucked into psychic Tik Toks all thanks to the all-knowing algorithm. Over the course of a few weeks (okay, maybe a few months) I noticed a very obvious pattern of who the psychics were calling on to give free readings. I may or may not have been banned from a few Tik Tok lives when I came to that realization. Desperation breeds gullibility and that’s the basis of my main characters’ career.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
My favorite scenes to write were the seances and tarot card scenes. I’ve always loved the occult, but not taken it very seriously, so it was fun to play around with the balance of the main characters trying to perform the supernatural for their clients while knowing internally that it was all a farce.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
This book looks much different than the first draft, although the core was always the same. I changed the ending to this book quite a few times as well as the time period it was set in, along with some details about narration. Once I got feedback, I had to take some time away from the manuscript because I was struck with choice paralysis. When I came back, I could finally see the bigger picture.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently writing my next thriller, which will be much more personal to me, and admittedly has been painful to write. Without giving too much away, it’s about female rage and what it means to be a new mother who is newly motherless.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
This year I went deep into the Kristin Hannah backlog and enjoyed every tear I shed over her writing. I also was completely slapped in the face by The Last Party by A.R. Torre in the best way. The next book I’d like to read is All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky. I’m embracing my love for what I’ve deemed “Messy Woman” books. I love writing messy women as much as I love reading about them. What’s life without a little mess?
EXCERPT
Harry Houdini once said there are three types of mediums: the deluded, the psychotics, and the criminals. I was the latter. I came from a long line of criminals. We didn’t break into people’s houses or rip purses from women’s arms as they walked down the streets. People came to us, and we only took what they gave. We were mediums.
Well, we acted like we were. If there really was such a thing, I owed them my greatest apologies. I was a fraud. A trickster. But I never went out of my way to hurt people. Hurt people came to me, seeking solace in the realms beyond ours, and I tried to give that to them.
A part of me didn’t feel bad about what we did for a living. People were glued to their televisions from the second they got home from work until they went to bed, and what were they doing? They were watching people pretend.
There was a reason it was called con artistry. It was a performance that required you to not only be the actress but also the stagehand, the set designer, and the director. It was a one—woman show, and I was the artist. I had my sister, but most of the time she was too stoned to help.
Neither of us had gone to college and I didn’t even make it through high school, so it wasn’t like we were set up for a great future. My younger sister, freshly twenty- one, bartended at a bar across town, and I ran our witchy little shop with her occasional help. Now I found myself juggling the roles of sister, mother, and businesswoman, all at the age of twenty- five. Scammed out of enjoying my twenties by my own parents.
When you looked at the row of cafés and shops on this street, it was clear we didn’t belong. Expensive cars sat parked outside storefronts, shaded by rows of perfect trees whose colors were shifting as autumn approached. A boutique down the street sold candles for forty dollars each, and an hour of talk therapy next door would cost you one hundred dollars an hour, even with insurance.
We had been grandfathered into the expensive property by my parents, who signed the lease agreement right before shit went south for them. Luckily, I’d been able to take over the lease.
All around us were crisp signs and seating dotted between manicured plants. Then there was us, with our chipping off-white paint and the stark black- and- white sign my sister had painted above the plum- colored door. When I’d asked her to come up with a logo for us, she’d been so excited she’d worked on it for days. There had been torn sheets of paper covering the floors and furniture with her early ideas. Then came the paint, which I was still finding specks of in our kitchen two years later.
Now, above our front door in delicate black lines, there was a crescent moon cupping a crystal ball, all surrounded by tiny stars.
Everyone had known who we were as soon as we hung the sign. We were mediums. Or palm readers, psychics, tarot readers. Whatever someone wanted us to be when they walked through the door. But they would never know the type of people we actually were. The type of family we came from. My sister and I were never going to be as bad as our parents. They’d crossed the line, and we were trying to distance ourselves from that life.
We were not thieves. We were scavengers.
