Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Kristin Battestella joins the Halloween fun!

Cate: Yay, a fellow New Jerseyan's here! Welcome, Kristin to my special Halloween celebration. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Kristin: I’m just a little New Jersey housewife who likes writing her horror! 



Cate: Love it! What do you love most about Halloween?

Kristin: Why scaring the neighborhood kids, of course!  Although I seem to do that daily anyway.  Seriously, I love the entire old world feeling that settles in this time of year.  I like that things are in a sort of dying or suspended, withering state, the way night time and chills creep in. It feels as if all of nature is respecting the dead.  I know it sounds morbid, but I like that we are supposed to take time to respect old customs, appreciate the harvest and the earth, and honor the dead.  What I don’t like about Halloween is the way it has become an excuse to dress like a slut. 



Cate: Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?

Kristin: Oh, there are so many!  My mother had to beg me right after Labor Day, “Please don’t put up any Halloween decorations yet!” So I used to terrorize my sister instead.  I’d put fake snakes and spiders into her bed, wall up her bedroom door with spider webbing, and then dress up freaky and perch in front of her window with a creepy old oil lantern we had.  I did crazy stuff like that year round- web up the whole house, be set up with fake blood and a toy knife to scare my parents when they walked in the door, sat in a rocking chair by the window like Mrs. Bates.  I just enjoyed scaring people, though I’m not really sure why!



Cate: Tee hee. That's the spirit. :) Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?

Kristin: Particularly with dreams, yes. You think you see someone in a dream, and then find things rearranged in your room where they supposedly were in the dream, or worse, dreaming about someone only to find out they just died.  Last night in fact I dreamt of one of those mortal and pestle bowls.  Now I have to go and get one!



Cate: What frightens you the most?

Kristin: I’m sure I’m afraid of a lot of things, but not in a boasting way, but I just don’t let fear bother me.  It’s perfectly okay to admit to fear, perhaps that is why I like to scare people, and write horror and vampire stories debating about darkness and light.  Why do we seek to create fear? Why do we enjoy the adrenaline or stimulation? It’s good to have fear in order to face what scares you, but it shouldn’t inhibit you. Use it in your creativity. On paper, I can explore any number of freaky and fearful things that I couldn’t or wouldn’t do in the real world.



Cate: Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own?

Kristin: We haven’t done any recently, but my husband and I used to go to cemeteries and take pictures quite often.  We enjoyed reading the dates on headstones or seeing the strange designs to tombs or what people left behind.  Again, cemeteries are a lot like that Halloween seasonal feeling I spoke of earlier.  There is an element of death and respect to them that is a privilege. You really wonder about the people who are buried there. How did they live? Why did they die? It makes you very appreciative.  When you go to a place and get that same kind of eerie feeling, watch out! 
We’ve been on a few mansion tours and museums where you just get that feeling that something is alive here, or that these walls are very, very old.



Cate: I love doing that too. Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?

Kristin: Actually, I have to say I don’t really have any good recipes.  I like pumpkin pie and banana bread and things like that. I bake a lot of cookies or muffins and such, but I don’t understand the whole cutesy Halloween baking thing, making kitty cat cupcakes with eyes and whiskers.  I’m more the type to have edible eyes in a bowl or a fake brain in the freezer.  The cat likes to chew on our fingers, so I gave him a bunch of toy severed ones, but he doesn’t like them.  He wants the real thing!



Cate: Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it online.

Kristin: My 7 book series with Muse it Up Publishing Fate and Fangs: Tales from the Vampire Family wrapped earlier this year.  We’re available in ebook and Kindle, and locals can pick up an autographed copy of my first The Vampire Family novel at any of the Fall events I’m doing now.  It has been a crazy few years doing a series! 



Cate: Care to share a blurb or excerpt?

Kristin: A safe blurb? Tough!  Here’s a little piece of Punishment: Lilith’s Trials, Book 2 in the Fate and Fangs series:

“You can’t do this to me.  You need me!”

Despite her fair hair and white garb, her voice was ugly, cold, and black as her heart, which was itself equal to the dark void beyond her captive light.  Unfortunately, Lilith still did not yet know her boundaries.  Not that it mattered.  Give me another reason to continue her suffering thus!  Though tempted to remove her biting cries forever, I only briefly smote down her banshee voice.  In one blue flash, her next words were silent.  Her mouth moved, and moved forcefully.  Her putrid eyes bulged and her skeletal neck flexed with screams that reached no ears in the void or anywhere hence.  Again, it was only a moment or two that I pained Lilith so; but a great deal of hours also passed between our place and yours.  She felt them both—the instantaneous agony of short, clipping pain as well as the long, torturous suffering.  Both then, was my delight fleeting and long yet gratifying.



Cate: Cool cover! What inspired you to write about the theme?

Kristin: In Fate and Fangs, I was interesting in taking time amid the longer, more action oriented The Vampire Family and its forthcoming sequel to focus on mood and characters.  Why do each of these people do what they do regarding love, pain, suffering, excess, sex, and life?  All of my vampires come from this serious examination.  Can something born of evil ever know love and light? Even if you are a ‘good’ vampire, how long- decades, centuries- will it be before that inherent evil rears its head?  I enjoy playing with these big themes in assorted times and places and histories. 



Cate: Anything else you’d like to share?

Kristin: Boo!



Cate:  :) Woo hoo! Kristin has a giveaway!

Kristin:  How about we have one lucky commenter win his or her choice of a Fate and Fangs ebook?? 

Cate: Cool. Everyone, be sure to leave your email address along with a comment. 
Thanks so much for sharing in the fun, Kristin!