Cate: Yay, Taryn’s here for my special Halloween celebration. Taryn,
please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Taryn: Well, I live and work in spooooooooky Sleepy Hollow, which is
Holiday Central this time of year. It’s the setting of my new sexy paranormal
releases, LIGHTNING and THUNDER, for Decadent Publishing’s fun 1Night Stand
series. I also set my first erotic paranormal, SLEEPY HOLLOW DREAMS there. SLEEPY HOLLOW sort of lends itself to
spooktacular stories this time of year!
Cate: Whoa, so cool. What do you love most about Halloween?
Taryn: The leaves, the nip in
the air, the smells of apples and cider and cinnamon, the eager faces on the
kids who come to your door in their costumes.
Cate: Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?
Taryn: Too many! When I was a
kid my mom, whose birthday was a few days before Halloween, loved to dress us up
in costumes she would whip up out of old clothes and things she had around the
house. One year, she tricked my younger brother and I out as Raggedy Ann and
Raggedy Andy. Before going out to trick or treat, we stopped off at a new store
that had just opened. They took a picture of us and we won a TV!
Cate: Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?
Taryn: Yes, and this one is a
little creepy. One night years ago, I
had a very vivid dream that I was in an elevator with my grandparents, and the
elevator car suddenly zoomed upward. I cracked my head on the ceiling of the
car. My grandparents had vanished. When I woke up, the dream stayed with me,
very unsettling. My dad was packing to go to Florida; his father had passed
away during the night. (My grandmother lived to 90!)
Cate: That would be unsettling. What frightens you the most?
Taryn: Horror movies!
Cate: Me too! lol Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your
own?
Taryn: My first career was as a
newspaper reporter and columnist and a college professor in the area claimed he
lived in an old haunted house. Around Halloween, he would trick it out even
more eerily and invite his students and the neighborhood kids. He invited me in
a few days before Halloween for a grand tour and yes, creaks, and unexplained
noises and moans and eeriness galore. He was a Catholic priest, so it was even
more spooky. (I don’t think his superiors at the college were too pleased about
his tours or my story!)
Cate: I bet! Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?
Taryn: Yes! Caramel apples are
the easiest: Open the bag of Kraft caramels (14 oz. package). Take each caramel
out of its cellophane wrapper. Melt in a pot with 2 tbs milk (or 2 minutes in
the microwave). Insert sticks in 6 apples. Butter a baking sheet or wax
paper.Swirl the apples in the melted caramel.
Rest them stick up on wax paper! (You can sprinkle them with crushed
nuts or chocolate chips, if you like!)
And here’s another, that’s also fun and quick:
Fluffy
Sleepy Hollow Pumpkin Dip
1 (16 oz) tub of Cool Whip, thawed
1 (5 oz) box of instant vanilla pudding mix
15 oz. can, solid pack pumpkin
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 hollowed-out pumpkin shell (optional)
Ginger snaps, graham crackers, apple slices
Mix the pudding mix, solid pack pumpkin and pumpkin
spice together in a large bowl. Fold in the Cool Whip. Chip in the refrigerator
until you’re ready to serve. Spoon the Fluffy Sleepy Hollow Pumpkin Dip into
the hollowed up pumpkin or a serving bowl.
Dip cookies and fruit in the fluff.
Cate: Yum. Care to share a blurb or excerpt?
Taryn: Why, yes! So happy you
asked. This is the blurb and excerpt from THUNDER which released from Decadent
Publishing on Oct. 26. (LIGHTNING released on Oct. 19).
BLURB:
Lonely young witch,
Veronica Hardwicke, has struggled to get on with
her life after the death of the elderly husband who’d left her a fortune and a
sprawling estate in mystical Sleepy Hollow. When frightening things go bump in
the night on a stormy Fourth of July, who better to call than the sexy
developer and contractor, Sean Jones, who's been renovating her mansion for
months?
Sean may grace the tabloid pages with a
different supermodel on his arm every night, but it's Veronica who drives him
nuts. Ignoring his instinct to stay away, he answers her summons.
Will the thundering passion of their 1Night
Stand tear down the barriers between them?
Veronica paced back
and forth in the grand entry foyer of the Belmont mansion, the kitten heels of
her Prada mules clacking on the marble floors.
The rest of the place
might not be finished, but she’d insisted on having a few rooms completed, so
at least she felt like she was living in a home, rather than a massive,
never-ending construction project. Well, her contractor had insisted, even though working around the main
entrance and central hallway created more work for him and his crew. But she
was forced to admit he was right.
Her cell phone
chimed on top of the antique credenza shoved flush against one wall. She leaped
for it. Probably Geneviève, to regale her with all the fun she was having in Paris. Or Sean, to advise
her he couldn’t make it after all. She sighed and read the text message on the
small screen.
Congratulations,
Veronica. 1Night Stand has found your date. Have a good time.
With both anxiety
and mounting excitement, she stared at the screen and waited. No other info.
Outside in the night, thunder boomed. She jumped then laughed at herself.
Ghosts
are one thing, but freaking out at the weather now? Cripes, you really do need
this date!
She let her imagination
run wild, then texted back for more details:
When?
Where? Who?
An insistent
pounding at the front door jarred her out of her fantasy. She swung the door
open on another explosive crack of thunder.
Sean stood on her
doorstep, his soaked T-shirt molding sculpted pecs and abs, his drenched hair
flattened over his brow. Rain poured down as he fiddled with his iPhone, a
bemused expression on his face. Behind him, jagged arrows of lightning tore the
dark sky. He glared at the screen, glanced at her in confusion, then back at
the screen.
Veronica’s own
phone pinged again. Thunder roared. She read the message in disbelief.
You’re
looking at him.
Cate: I'm hooked. :) What inspired you to write about the theme?
Taryn: Love Sleepy Hollow. When
LIGHTNING was accepted by Decadent, my editor hinted that, since the heroine
had three sisters and since the hero had a brother…Yep, you guessed it. Sean
Jones, the hunky studmuffin hero of THUNDER is the brother of Campbell Jones,
the sexy hero of LIGHTNING.
Cate: Love interrelated stories like that! Anything else you’d like to
share?
Taryn: Come visit me at my web
site, on Twitter, Facebook, the Amazon author page, and pretty much all over
the web. Except Pinterest.
Cate: You guys are in for a treat! Taryn has a giveaway!
Taryn: I’ll give away one copy
of one of my books (reader’s choice). I’ll include some swag, if the winner
wants to send me a snail mail address (by email).
Cate: Thanks for sharing the Halloween fun, Taryn! Only two more days left!
Meanwhile, here's a peek into the real Sleepy Hollow:
