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.
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!
