Author interview: Kathleen McKenna

Today is a momentous occasion on One More Page as I publish my first author interview!

Kathleen McKenna emailed me last month to see if I’d like to review her latest book, The Wedding Gift. In Kathleen’s own words, the book is

“A Southern Gothic paranormal story (ghosts, no vamps) told in the voice of a crazy charming small town beauty queen who runs for corn princess, loses the boy she wants and marries the idiot son of the towns richest family all before senior year is over. Marrying for money can be really dangerous. Leeann’s new mother in law is beyond horrible and the wedding gift she receives is a little off too. Mrs. Willetts, Leeann’s new in law is appalled at her son’s choice so as a tongue in cheek wedding gift she gives the newlyweds a fabulous antebellum mansion, one still occupied by an earlier beautiful unwanted bride who lived there and killed there.”

I loved the book (you can read my review here) and have been chatting to Kathleen over email ever since, so a couple of weeks ago I asked her if she’d let me interview her for One More Page and she very kindly agreed.

Amanda : I loved The Wedding Gift; what inspired you to write it?

Kathleen: I had spotted this gorgeous antebellum house once in New Orleans, I wanted to live there!  Anyway I started thinking about the people who DID live there, were they happy, or what if a beautiful girl from the wrong side of the tracks got to live there and then what if there was a ghost?  LOL! As you can see I’m somewhat demented, anyway it built on that, I had fun writing that book!

Amanda: Lead character Leeann is very funny – describe her in five words.

Kathleen: Confident, beautiful, loyal, selfish, sweet.

Amanda: Who was your favourite character to write and why?

Kathleen: Hands down Jessie. Before I started writing I was an adolescent counselor; Jessie is every tough sweet kid I ever worked with all rolled into one. I loved her so much that I had to give her, her own book and that’s The Comeback (the follow up book to the Wedding Gift, due for release later this year!)

Amanda: The Wedding Gift features a very feisty ghost in Robina, have you ever had a ghostly encounter of your own?

Kathleen: Well I have, or I think I have on a few different occasions, none of them were good; seeing things move that you didn’t move yourself or hearing things drop in another room – it’s not nearly as much fun as it sounds. Actually everyone I’ve ever met has a creepy little story. All of them seem to be kind of negative so my impression of ghosts is that overall they are scary and so I took it up a notch with Robina -  Miz Willets makes an uhm….charming ghost.

Amanda: The Wedding Gift combines chick lit, horror, mystery and comedy – are your own reading tastes this varied? What are your favourite books?

Kathleen: Oh geez, varied is an understatement for my tastes! I love history, horror, biography, humor, mystery … My fave book of all time is The Cider House Rules, but last year what made me happy were the Charlaine Harris books and Audrey Niffengers fabulous ghost story Her Fearful Symmetry.  I have to recommend the scariest book I ever read; it’s called Come Closer by Sara Gran, overall my taste pretty much runs to if its a book I want to read it.

Amanda: There are two more books planned in the series, can you tell me a bit about them.

Kathleen: Heck yes!  The Comeback is about Jessie and Mark’s adventures in leasing a very famous Beverly Hills Mansion, once owned by Desiree Danforth. The thing about really famous beautiful women is that being dead sucks for them, and dead stars are no different than say Lindsay Lohan; everybody wants a comeback.

The House on Easton Drive takes my crew back to Dalton to reunite with old friends and with Miz Bethany, then through circumstances I can’t relate for spoiler reasons Jessie manages to find a house that makes Willets House look like a nice place to live by comparison!

Amanda: Do you have any plans to write other types of books in the paranormal genre (vampires, angels etc?)

Kathleen: I wont write vamps; two women I admire own the genre to me. Anne Rice’s soooo sexy vampires, and Charlaine Harris’s hilarious and also smoking hot Sookie Stackhouse books. I’m a straight up ghost girl. I have two other novels that are supernatural – well actually they are  horror. One is about the Manson family and is ironically named Family Matters, the other one Dead Town combines a serial killer and a ghost town and I wrote it based on some very creepy stuff that went down just eighty miles from where I live. Then there are my other books about rich, beautiful women who’s lives went straight to hell (and usually to the grave) based on some baaaaad marital choices.

Kathleen – thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed and good luck with The Comeback!