Author Interview with Karen Hulene Bartell ~ Kissing Kin #ParanormalRomance #WRPbks #Blog

Please help me welcome Karen Hulene Bartell…

Title – Kissing Kin – Available for Pre-order until 3/13, Date of Release

Author – Karen Hulene Bartell

Website – http://www.KarenHuleneBartell.com/ 

Connect – https://karenhulenebartell.com/connect

Genre – Paranormal Romance

Publisher – The Wild Rose Press

Book Blurb –

Maeve Jackson is starting over after a broken engagement—and mustering out of the Army. No job and no prospects, she spins out on black ice and totals her car.

When struggling vintner Luke Kaylor stops to help, they discover they’re distantly related. On a shoestring budget to convert his vineyard into a winery, he makes her a deal: prune grapevines in exchange for room and board.

But forgotten diaries and a haunted cabin kickstart a five-generational mystery with ancestors that have bones to pick. As carnal urges propel them into each other’s arms, they wonder: Is their attraction physical…or metaphysical?

Kissing Kin Excerpt –

His groin aching as his jeans tightened, he wanted her. No longer able to block the impulse, he wrapped one arm around her back as he cradled her head in his other hand.

Her eyelids fluttering, she threw her arms around his neck and, with a muffled moan, pressed closer.

Their bodies silently communing, he ran his lips over her throat, sucking at her supple skin and moving his lips along her collarbone.

Encouraged as she shuddered and tilted her hips against him, he nudged open her shirt’s top button and nuzzled her breasts. Then he drew her to him in a deep kiss that left him wanting to slip off her clothes and feel her warm, soft skin against his. The urge to take her overpowering, he eyed the bed.

Whoa. What am I doing? As if shot with a water cannon, he pulled away, breathless.

She regarded him through wide, shellshocked eyes.

Like the lights coming up in the theater, the feverish mood broke. His arms fell to his sides as he stepped back. “Sorry, I–”

“No, I’m as much to blame–”

“I don’t know what came over me.” A nervous, self-conscious laugh escaped his lips.

“So suddenly, right?” Nodding, she met his gaze. “Like an outside force took over…” She swallowed, took a deep breath, and glanced away. “This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way.”

“Me, neither.”

****

Inspiration for Kissing Kin

The earliest idea for the paranormal romance first came to me during 2020 because of the striking similarities between Covid and the Spanish Flu of 1918, but publishers convinced me that no one wanted to read about pandemics. Time passed. My manuscript languished.

Then I noticed a handmade cookbook my grandmother had constructed during the 1930s depression. It’s made of two cardboard flaps reinforced at the edges with duct tape and held together by two metal ring binders. Originally given as a Christmas present to her oldest daughter, I inherited it decades later. That modest book inspired me. (In fact, I used some of its recipes in Kissing Kin: Simple Sponge Cake, Mother’s Soft Gingerbread, and…a formula for the treatment of chicken lice with nicotine-sulfate.)

The general tone of the cookbook was chatty, reading more like a journal than a collection of family recipes, but it motivated me to begin drafting a five-generation story of forgotten diaries and a haunted cabin with ancestors that have bones to pick.

What inspired the setting? Travel–and a missed turn!

Whenever I visit provocative places, encounter new experiences, sample different ethnic foods, or chance upon stimulating people, I’m inspired. Ideas flow. (I should’ve been a travel correspondent.) There’s something about traveling that takes me out of my rut and propels me into new realms of possibility.

I’ve written some of my best concepts sitting in noisy airports or hotel bathrooms at midnight (so I don’t wake my husband with the light). Being out of my element and in new environments stimulates my imagination.

As I visit new destinations, I’m infused with innovative ideas, envisioning scene after scene, like vignettes flowing from one to the next and the next.

In Kissing Kin’s case, my husband and I spent Christmas week hiking and horseback riding in Big Bend National Park twenty years ago. You’ve seen the area on maps–the southernmost tip of Texas that borders the Rio Grande and dips into Mexico. Spanning more than 800,000 acres of Chihuahuan desert, mountains, and rivers, Big Bend is larger than the state of Rhode Island–and filled with lions and bobcats and bears. Oh, my!

Driving home early that New Year’s morning, we missed the turnoff in Alpine and followed TX-118 north. Snow-covered and glinting against the frosty blue January sky, a remote jumble of mountain peaks and ranges beckoned as they rose above the desert floor. I was enchanted. Gazing at the sky island for the first time, wide-eyed, I wondered whether those rocky pinnacles were mirages or optical delusions.

But as the craggy peaks loomed larger (a mile high, I later learned), I realized they were no hallucination or Fata Morgana. A hasty glance at the map told us these were the Davis Mountains. As we approached, vertical basalt columns rose like thousands of giant fingers reaching for the sky. The palisades, buttes, and bluffs towered above both sides of the road with a raw, majestic beauty, and I breathed a contented sigh, almost as if coming home.

That missed turn took us only a half hour out of our way, but as we drove through those mountains, my life changed. From that day to this, the area’s held my heart and imagination. Wild Rose Pass became Book I of the Trans-Pecos Series, and Kissing Kin has become Book II. Both novels are standalones with dissimilar genres–Wild Rose Pass is a historical novel, while Kissing Kin is a paranormal romance.

So what was the inspiration for Kissing Kin? A combination of discovering the magical beauty of the sky island, as well as recognizing the sentimental value of a humble booklet.

****

Buy Links –

UNIVERSAL LINK: https://books2read.com/u/boXl10

AMAZON: https://shorturl.at/iwEIJ

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204849593-kissing-kin

APPLE: https://books.apple.com/us/book/kissing-kin/id6475424012

BARNES & NOBLE: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kissing-kin-karen-bartell/1144521766?ean=9781509253951

Author Biography –

Author of the Trans-Pecos, Sacred Emblem, Sacred Journey, and Sacred Messenger series, as well as Kissing Kin, Fox Tale, Wild Rose Pass, The Keys: Voice of the Turtle and more, Karen is a best-selling author, motivational keynote speaker, IT technical editor, wife, and all-around pilgrim of life. She writes multicultural, offbeat love stories steeped in the supernatural. Born to rolling-stone parents who moved annually, Bartell found her earliest playmates as fictional friends in books. Paperbacks became her portable pals. Ghost stories kept her up at night—reading feverishly. The paranormal was her passion. Novels offered an imaginative escape. An only child, she began writing her first novel at the age of nine, learning the joy of creating her own happy endings. Professor emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin, Karen resides in the Texas Piney Woods with her husband Peter and her mews—three rescued cats and a rescued *Cat*ahoula Leopard dog.

Social Media Links –

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenHuleneBartell

MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/karenbartell

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuleneKaren

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/karenhulenebartell/   

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/611950.Karen_Hulene_Bartell  

Website: http://www.KarenHuleneBartell.com/ 

Email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/karenhulenebartell 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenhulenebartell/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/karen-hulene-bartell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenhulenebartell/

AUTHORSdb: https://authorsdb.com/community/17847-karen-hulene-bartell