Win Giftcard & HEREAFTER, Plus Author Interview With Terri Bruce

Update:  The Contest is CLOSED.  No more entries will be accepted.  

Two winners will be announced on Friday evening, November 2nd!  One wins the gift card & book (for the scariest entry) and the other winner wins the book (drawn from my fabulous and feathery witch hat!). !

Winner of scariest entry will be chosen by the past winner of our 2012 Flash Fiction Writing Contest, someone who also survived a harrowing Halloween Week (courtesy of Superstorm Sandy).

Are you brooms gassed up and ready to go?  Well get ready to kickoff and soar, because the wildest and wackiest holiday blog hop has begun, and Soul and Sweet Tea is a part of it!

Today across the web, there are contests galore beginning today, and we’re proud to be among over four hundred fantastically freaky book blogging and writing sites participating in the Spooktacular Halloween Blog Hop!

Click this link below to find over 400 blog contests:
  SPOOKTACULAR BLOG HOP 2012

And here's what to do!  Click on the link I've placed above, and check out the over 400 sites that will have their giveaway/contests go live beginning both today and tomorrow!  The blog contests will all end at the stroke of midnight on Halloween (October 31st, Eastern Standard Time)!

But now, it's time to fly into our contest and interview with my friend Terri Bruce, author of the deliciously fun paranormal adventure, HEREAFTER.

After reading the interview, enter the contest for a chance to win hereafter, and a $20 Barnes & Noble Giftcard!

Buy HEREAFTER!

Thirty-six-year-old Irene Dunphy didn't plan on dying any time soon, but that’s exactly what happens when she makes the mistake of getting behind the wheel after a night bar-hopping with friends. 

She finds herself stranded on earth as a ghost, and to make matters worse, the only person who can see her—courtesy of a book he found in his school library—is a fourteen-year-old boy genius obsessed with the afterlife. 

This sounds suspiciously like hell to Irene, so she prepares to strike out for the Great Beyond. The only problem is that, while this side has exorcism, ghost repellents, and soul devouring demons, the other side has three-headed hell hounds, final judgment, and eternal torment. If only there was a third option...

JF:  Welcome to Soul and Sweet Tea, Terri.  Would care for a cup of hot tea or cocoa on this chilly October afternoon?

TB:  I guess I have to go with the hot tea.  You see, lately I've started a ritual of making myself a formal afternoon tea every Sunday. I get out the china teapot, one of my china teacups from my collection, and one of my special teas ("Oasis" from Tea Forte is a favorite at the moment).

JF:  That sounds yummy!  

JF:  By the way, our readers are eager to get to know you, so do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

TB:  That'd be great (sips tea).

JF:  How long have you been writing?

TB:  I’ve always written; in grade school, they had us write a story every year, which we then made into a book – we printed it neatly on nice paper, drew pictures to accompany the story, and then sewed it all together with cardboard wrapped in wall paper for covers. I think that was my favorite thing we did all year and I still have those stories (thanks Mom for keeping them!). It wasn’t until 2001, however, that I really set out to write a novel “for real,” and that’s when I started working steadily toward becoming a professional author.

JF:  Who are your favorite authors?

TB:  This is a toughie because I tend to like particular books, rather than particular authors; that is to say, I don’t always read or like everything a particular author writes. However, I own a lot of books by Alexander Dumas, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Jan Karon, Lisa See, and Terry Pratchett. In general, I tend to like classics—Ivanhoe, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Idylls of the King; young adult fantasy—Philip Pullman, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, Madeline L’Engle; and “Asian” fiction (especially Asian women’s fiction)—The Secrets of Jin-Shei, Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Tea House Fire.

JF:  Tell us a little about yourself.

TB:  Currently, I work full time, as a grant writer for a non-profit, and fiction writing is a second full time job on top of that, so there isn’t a lot of free time right now. When there is, I love horseback riding, hiking, quilting, and gardening. Now ask me the last time I did any of those things! However, if Hereafter does well, my husband has agreed to let me buy a horse, so hopefully there will be more horseback riding in my future. My secret wish is to someday own a horse and move to Bar Harbor, Maine. I’ll ride my horse in Acadia National Park every day and spend my winters snowed in, writing novels and spinning wool into yarn (which I will then crochet into beautiful garments). 

JF:  Since HEREAFTER is a paranormal tale, do you believe in ghosts or the afterlife?  Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

TB:  Have I had a paranormal experience?! J I’ve blogged about the odd occurrences at my house and about the spirit of one of my cats that hung around after she died. That’s all just the tip of the iceberg, but many of my other experiences are too personal to share. I can definitely say that I think there are things in this world that we can’t explain yet!

JF:  Halloween is just around the corner.  Are you or your family doing anything special to celebrate?

TB:  I wish—I love Halloween and when I was a kid, my mom would go all out (see this guest post about the costumes she used to make us and later in the week I’ll be blogging about the pumpkins she used to carve). Then later, as an adult, I lived in Salem, Massachusetts—which is a WILD place to be on Halloween. I loved it! Unfortunately, now I live in a different place, in a neighborhood where we don’t get any trick-or-treaters so we really never do anything. 

On a side note, while Halloween is cool and one of my favorite holidays, I’m actually really looking forward to the Day of the Dead (November 1^st and 2^nd). Halloween is more about warding off ghosts and ghouls and the negative side of death, and Day of the Dead is about commemorating departed loved ones. I’ve never celebrated Day of the Dead.

JF:  Thanks so much Terri, and I can’t wait to read the rest.  I’ve read the first few chapters myself, and can say I love the feel, your writer’s voice,  and the unique plot of this book.  

So you wanna win HERAFTER?  

You do?  Great!

Now let me lay down the rules:

1)Entries will be accepted from today until midnight eastern standard time on 
October 31st, 2012.

2)Either join my blog, or sign into Google or Wordpress, because I will need your screen name (if you win).

3)If you are a winner, I will need your contact information so you can receive your prize.

4)Everyone who enters must write in 100 words or less, a short account of their scariest, spookiest moment ever!  Be creative and have fun with this.  One winner will be chosen from among all entrants for their spookiest, scariest moment.  

No wrongs, just fright!

5)So you’re not a writer but a reader?  Never fear!  Another winner will be chosen from among all entrants, as I place every entrant’s screen name into my fabulous feathered witch’s hat and draw out the screen name of the lucky winner.

6)Make sure to enter by the deadline, as there will be no exceptions.
You snooze, you lose.

7) Terri's also kind enough to throw in MORE books as prizes!  There will be 2 winners awarded the book if there are 20 entrants or less, but the prizes multiply by the number of entrants.   So if there's 40, we'll have 3 winners, etc.  Potentially there can be up to 5 books given away, but that's based on an estimate of 100 entrants.  One overall winner (who has scariest answer) wins the gift card.

Good luck and Happy Halloween!  Also, a special thank you to my readers for making the first year of my blog such a success.