by Lorie Lewis Ham

This week we have a review of the first in a new cozy paranormal mystery, Dead & Breakfast by Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor, along with a fun interview with Kat and Rosiee. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase the book from Amazon.

Dead & Breakfast: A Dead & Breakfast Mystery by Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor
Review by Lorie Lewis Ham

If you have been reading KRL for very long, you know that I am a huge fan of vampires—have been for most of my life. So when I heard that there was going to be a gay cozy mystery series featuring vampires I knew I had to check it out. Dead & Breakfast is the first in the series and I absolutely love the tagline on the cover-Come For the Vampires, Stay For the Scones! Boy am I glad that I did. I will happily check into this bed and breakfast any time.

Married couple Arthur and Sal run a bed and breakfast in the small town of Trident Falls, Oregon. The place is charming, but they are having trouble getting guests and they fear it’s because they are vampires—you heard that correctly, they are vampires. But they don’t fit any of the stereotypes. They can go in the sun, but have to wear sunscreen and Arthur takes an umbrella. They eat garlic, though it upsets Sal’s stomach. And they don’t bite, though they do drink blood. Arthur has always dreamed of settling down and thinks this is finally their chance, despite the not-so-paranormal friendliness of the town. In this world, the supernatural isn’t hidden, and while there are several other paranormals in town—including the werewolf barista, and the elven town coroner—sadly they face a lot of prejudice, something Arthur had experienced when he was human as well as a gay man. The couple finally get a guest, the new city manager, and plan a welcome that includes the mayor. Unfortunately, the mayor doesn’t show and his body is discovered dead in their begonias with two puncture wounds in his neck. The local sheriff is determined that Sal is the killer, and Arthur is mostly certain that they’ve been framed, so he takes it upon himself to use the detecting skills he has learned from TV and books and find the real killer.

The mystery in this story is filled with plenty of red herrings and twists and turns, but it’s the characters that make Dead & Breakfast an absolute delight! Sal it witty and snarky, and Arthur is adorable. The werewolf and the coroner were interesting as well. There is also a message about discrimination and accepting those who are different from you, which is needed now more than ever. Dead & Breakfast is the perfect vampire cozy mystery to read during Halloween season, or anytime if you enjoy cozy mysteries and vampires. Dead & Breakfast is absolutely wonderful! I can’t wait for the next one in the series!

Lorie Lewis Ham is our Editor-in-Chief and a contributor to various sections, coupling her journalism experience with her connection to the literary and entertainment worlds. Explore Lorie’s mystery writing at Mysteryrat’s Closet. Lorie’s latest mystery series is set in the Tower District of Fresno and the world of community theatre! Book 1, One of Us, and Book 2, One of You, are both available to purchase–links on her website.

Interview Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor:

KRL: How long have you been writing?

Kat: I’ve been writing stories all my life, but I began seriously planning for a career as an author when I was twelve.
Rosiee: Same! I started storytelling when I was little, every night before bed, but I didn’t start really crafting book-shaped stories until 5th grade or so.

KRL: When did your first novel/book come out, what was it called?

Rosiee: My first book, Tarnished are the Stars, released almost exactly six years ago. In fact, the release day is only one day off from the release day for Dead & Breakfast.
Kat: Dead & Breakfast is my debut novel!

KRL: Congrats Kat! Have you always written mysteries/suspense and if not, what else have you written?

Kat: Dead & Breakfast was actually the first mystery I’ve written, despite my lifelong love of the genre. I usually write science fiction and/or fantasy.
Rosiee: Ditto–this is the first traditional mystery I’ve written, though I would argue that a lot of my science fiction and fantasy books have some sort of mystery at their core which I think prepared me well to write a more classic murder mystery now.

KRL: What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your latest book/series? And why/how did you end up choosing gay vampires for your main characters? I love that you did btw!

Rosiee: So much of this book was created in jest. For years I would joke about the cozy mystery I was never going to write and text my friends silly scenarios about these vampires. Kat was one of those friends and quickly became a co-creator when the time came to actually write the story.
Them being a gay married couple was always part of the initial concept. I’d spent most of my life identifying with vampires as outcasts from society. They’re also often incredibly camp, so it just clicked that these vampires would be part of that community. As for the setting, I’ve lived in Oregon my whole life and I really wanted to write a love letter to the queer communities that exist in rural pockets throughout the state.
Kat: Lucky for me, the setting and characters were already part of the pitch, which made early planning and building a shared vision much easier.

KRL: How did you end up writing this book together? Did you know each other before that?

Rosiee: Our origin story dates back to 2018 when I was a mentor for a writing program. I picked Kat as my mentee. Pretty quickly, Kat became an essential part of my own writing process and we’ve been working closely with each other on our books as critique partners ever since.
Kat: Rosiee has always been an incredible mentor and dear friend, so I was thrilled to co-write this project with them!
Rosiee: With Dead & Breakfast, even though I had the idea for the book years ago, it never felt like something I could really write until Kat came on board for the project. I think I was just in my own head about being funny enough to pull it off, but Kat and I really feed off of each other when it comes to comedy and everything just clicked!

KRL: What was the process like?

Rosiee: We co-write in a rather odd way. Basically, Kat and I have opposite strengths when it comes to the process. Kat loves fast-drafting and I love revision. So Kat, who lives in Alabama, starts the day by writing a chapter and then sends it to me by noon on the west coast. From here, I rework the chapter, adding layers and sometimes reorganizing scenes, before sending it back by the end of the day.
Kat: I’ve always preferred the first draft to revision, so writing the messy, skeletal chapters and getting to read Rosiee’s revisions is like a dream! The process works very well for us.
Rosiee: We basically write two drafts concurrently, which means our end product is a lot more polished than it would usually be if we were writing alone. Plus, we get to spend the whole process making up jokes together, which is honestly the best part of the job.

KRL: Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to experience from your work?

Kat: “Entertaining” is usually set up in opposition to “educational” or “serious,” but I think every book should first and foremost be engaging for the reader, otherwise it’s just homework. Dead & Breakfast has a light tone and tons of silliness and jokes, but we also hope the readers enjoy puzzling out the mystery, and joining Arthur on his journey to find his place in this new community he and Sal are trying to build a life in.
Rosiee: I totally agree with Kat here. I also think writing “to entertain” can sometimes feel like a performance with an audience rather than a more interactive work. So much of art right now is being positioned as “content” for “consumption,” but I think the best art, and the art I strive to make with my books, is at its best when its audience is engaging intellectually with the material and practicing empathy as they read.

KRL: Do you have a schedule for your writing or just work whenever you can?

Kat: We both write full-time, so we try to show up and write or revise five days a week, but we each have our own solo careers, so there’s a lot of wiggle room and flexibility when other deadlines pop up.
Rosiee: We definitely try to make room for bad days while we’re writing, too. Not every day is going to be a big output day, and we both deal with the occasional off-day where there’s really nothing to be done about it. Other than that, when we’re actively drafting a book, Kat tries to send me a scene by noonish every week day and I try to send one back by five. I’d say we tend to average three or four chapters each week when we’re on a roll.

KRL: What is your ideal time to write?

Kat: I like to write in the mornings before my brain gets too full of the day-to-day, and because I’m two time zones ahead of Rosiee, this means I can write a whole chapter and get it to them before they sit down to start their own workday.
Rosiee: I write full time now, which means I really try to write during the work day when I have the house to myself. In years past, I worked a full time job as well and before that I was a student, so my brain is very accustomed to creative output in the evening hours, but I’m on a mission to break myself of that habit!

KRL: Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what’s going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Kat: We write a synopsis of the book, then work off a bullet-point list of upcoming chapters where we write more detailed notes about what happens.
Rosiee: We have to do more detailed outlining as we go as well. We’ll usually hop on a call to outline the five or six chapters at a time, but if we try to do more than that at once, we just end up scrapping it because of how the chapters end up coming out.

KRL: Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning? I believe one or both of you are queer, do you feel that being queer made it harder to get published?

Kat: It’s lucky this isn’t a taped interview, because we’d have had to pause for five minutes while I laughed maniacally at the first part of this question. My publishing journey has been a long and winding road, to say the least. I sent my first query to agents in 2014; I finally got representation in 2021. Dead & Breakfast was the third project my agent and I sent out to editors. The first two didn’t sell. I think being queer did affect the length of my journey, but not always directly. Lots of agents and editors are queer themselves, or great allies. My queerness affects how I write, though, and I tend to have very messy and complex female main characters, which can be a struggle to place whether or not you or the character are queer.
Rosiee: In contrast to Kat, I think I’ve been incredibly lucky. My first published book was the first book I tried to publish. I’d written others before, but it was the first one I sent to agents and editors. I got my agent within about four months of querying and I got my book deal about six months into submission. The more difficult part of this industry for me has been staying published. I’ve also been lucky in that most of my direct publishing team has always been supportive of the queerness of my books, but it’s been difficult to get publishers to give my queer books the same kind of energy and monetary backing as those of my straight peers. I’ve also faced issues with book banning for my picture book and YA books. Still, I wouldn’t give up the opportunity to write books that speak to my authentic self as a queer storyteller for an easier, straighter road.

KRL: I’m glad neither of you gave up! Do you have a great rejection/critique or acceptance story you’d like to share?

Kat: My favorite acceptance story is the tale of how Rosiee and I met. They were mentoring in a program I applied to. In the lead-up to mentee selection announcements, they were dropping teasers about their pick. They’d chosen two mentees for that round, and said both manuscripts had a lot in common–number of words in the title, number of major characters, even word count. I was sure that meant I wasn’t in the running, because my book had an unusual number for all those categories. Turns out my co-mentee was also a weirdo. Having Rosiee as a mentor was a huge, wonderful surprise, and it definitely changed the trajectory of my career in a great way.
Rosiee: I’m not sure if this really counts, but I will say that every single time I’ve gotten a book deal, I have been sick. It feels like a sort of omen now. Whenever my agent tells me someone is interested in one of my books, if I don’t have a cold or something, I feel certain it’s not going to sell, and so far I’ve been right about that.

KRL: Most interesting book signing story-in a bookstore or other venue?

Rosiee: I think my favorite book signing experiences have all been at comic cons. I really love doing panels, but the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me was signing books at a con and looking up to see someone cosplaying the characters from the book in the signing line!
Kat: Since this book is my debut, I don’t have any signing stories—yet.

KRL: What are your future writing goals?

Kat: My goal is what it’s always been: to write the kinds of books I want to read, and share them with the world so other readers with the same (flawless) taste can enjoy them.
Rosiee: Mine are similar to Kat’s. I want to keep writing books that I can be proud of!

KRL: Who are your writing heroes?

Rosiee: Someone who I have admired for a long time is Kiersten White. Her books are basically always a hit for me, and even though she writes in many different genres, I always feel like I’m in exceptional storytelling hands.
Kat: This is cheesy, but my biggest writing heroes are my friends—including Rosiee. I’m fortunate to have a group of fellow authors who support each other and help each other grow and succeed. If you want a name of someone I admire who I don’t know personally, Martha Wells, not only because of her skill but also because of her tenacity in an industry that is so often brutal and thankless.

KRL: What kind of research do you do?

Kat: The kind where I end up with an armful of books from the library and spend a ton of time learning about something fascinating, using “this is research for a novel” as an excuse to get lost down rabbit holes.
Rosiee: I’m very prone to the research rabbit hole, so these days I try to stay as focused as possible and only do research if it’s something I really need to know. Too often I have spent an entire day looking at furniture catalogs from the 1920s only to decide there doesn’t really need to be a couch in this scene after all.

KRL: What do you like to read?

Rosiee: I read pretty broadly across genres, but lately my favorites have been horror and western (and especially the intersection of the two).
Kat: Almost everything. Science fiction is my first and truest love, but I also read a ton of fantasy, mystery, romance, horror—pretty much every genre.

KRL: What are your favorite TV shows or movies?

Kat: This is so hard to narrow down. My all-time favorite movie is Jurassic Park, and some of my top TV shows are Hannibal, Black Sails, and Interview with the Vampire, if we’re talking dramas. For comedy, my favorite is Bob’s Burgers, but the list could go on and on.
Rosiee: My favorite TV show is Our Flag Means Death and my favorite movie is Princess Mononoke. If I start listing more we’ll be here forever…

KRL: Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Kat: Be purposeful, in everything from the big plot points and character arcs down to individual word choice in every sentence. It’s easy to get swept away with your first idea, but sitting down and asking yourself why you want to write this book, and what you want the book to be when it’s done, will help you every step of the process.
Rosiee: Totally agree with Kat! I’ll also add, don’t make writing your whole personality. When it’s a hobby, it’s all fun and games, but the second it becomes your job, you’ll need other hobbies (non-monetizable) to keep you going. Make sure you have lots of other stuff going on so you don’t get caught up in the stress and drama of publishing.

KRL: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Kat: I’m tall. This must be a surprising fact, considering how often people have met me and said, “Wow, you’re tall.”
Rosiee: And I’m short. For some reason people always expect me to be the tall one.

KRL: Do you have any pets?

Rosiee: I have two cats and a dog!
Kat: Sadly, I’m allergic to cats now, but I had pets growing up.

KRL: Is there anything you would like to add?

KRL: Will this be a series?

Rosiee & Kat: Yes! Another Dead & Breakfast mystery is coming soon, with more puns, murder, and magic!

KRL: Yay! Where can our readers find you online?

Rosiee: rosieethor.com and @rosieethor on social media.
Kat: kathillisbooks.com which has links to my socials!

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

To enter to win a copy of Dead & Breakfast, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “breakfast” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen November 1, 2025. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

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