Friday, October 3, 2014

Kathy Bosman spices up Halloween!



Cate: Please welcome Kathy Bosman to my special Halloween celebration. Kathy, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kathy: I write sweet, contemporary romance usually set in Africa. I live in South Africa, am married to the love of my life and have three kids – well, two teenagers and an eleven-year-old. I homeschool them while I write.

Cate: Very cool. :) What do you love most about Halloween?
Kathy: I like all the decorations and fun snacks you can make. South Africans don’t celebrate it much yet – it’s growing here.

Cate: Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?
Kathy: Because it’s only become a “thing” here in recent years, I’d say last year we had the most fun – making Halloween dough figures in school.

Cate: Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?
Kathy: Quite a few things I think would pass more for miracles than coincidences. My husband had one creepy experience – as a young single man, when he and his mom were praying separately in their rooms once, two pictures fell off the walls. Thankfully, nothing like that has happened to me because I would have freaked.

Cate: Yikes! What frightens you the most?
Kathy: I think being totally alone – having no one in the world to love.

Cate: Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own?
Kathy: Nope. Sounds interesting.

Cate: Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?
Kathy: This is what we made last year but it’s not edible: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/410390584765333070/ 

Cate: Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it online.
Kathy: His Halloween Kisses was written on the spur of the moment – I just decided one day I wanted to write a fun Halloween romance, and within a few months, it had been sent to the publisher.






Cate: Care to share a blurb or excerpt?
Kathy:
Ali’s never been so scared. She’s housesitting for a colleague on Halloween night, but the lights have gone out, and terrible noises and crashes send her imagination into overdrive. When her brother’s friend comes to her rescue, he kisses her in the dark three times. Once back in the light, Ali is embarrassed at allowing him to kiss her. Byron tries to ignore his strong attraction for Ali, especially seeing he’s not ready for a relationship. When Ali finds out why, she runs away, but life has other plans. What can bring them together? Fate, faith, or the memory of his Halloween kisses?

Excerpt
The TV made a fizz, and the light from its screen compressed into a small dot. All the lights in the house went out.
A power failure.
She sat frozen for a moment, unsure what to do next. This wasn’t her own home. Where did they keep candles and torches? At her place, she stored them in the kitchen drawer, and so did her parents in her childhood house. Wouldn’t that be the logical place? Blinking furiously, she hoped to find some light somewhere to guide her to the kitchen without bumping into something. Nothing. She couldn’t see a single thing. There was no moon tonight. Probably as overcast as it had been the whole miserable, rainy, windy afternoon. She spread out her hands in front of her and walked slowly, one awkward, terrifying step at a time.
In the darkness, the sounds were magnified. Wind whined like a strangled prisoner through every window, door crack, and ceiling board. Something tapped at one of the windows from the dining room. Tap…tap…tap. Probably just a branch from a nearby bush. It couldn’t be a ghost or a zombie, could it? Her quickened pulse didn’t believe any logical arguments tonight.
Images streamed through her darkened vision—pictures of real witches, zombies with bared teeth and deathly pale faces, and horrible creatures with horrific wolf-like snouts and sharp fangs. She shivered. For some reason, tonight, Halloween was getting under her skin.
And not in a nice way.
A crash sounded in the kitchen.
Her leg remained poised for the next step, but she couldn’t take it.
She couldn’t go in there.
What was that? Terror strangled her a moment, making it hard to breathe.
Possibly only the Bauman family cat, their little black and white tabby. A smile curled her mouth in response to the calming thought. Black cat—bad luck. Yeah, she sure was overthinking this whole simple inconvenience of a power outage.
Something brushed past her leg, something warm, soft, and silent.
Hot tears sprang to her eyes.

Cate: What inspired you to write about the theme?
Kathy: I come from a religious background and Halloween was always frowned upon and made out to be evil and horrible. A few years ago, I began to question everything I’d been taught growing up, including Halloween. I become rather fascinated with the holiday. Pity we don’t celebrate it properly here in South Africa as it looks like fun.

Cate: Kathy has a giveaway! :)
Kathy: I’ll give away a PDF copy of my book, His Halloween Kisses, to a lucky commenter on this post.

Cate: Thanks for coming all the way from South Africa, Kathy! Happy Halloween.