Have you ever sat down with a couple friends who really click together and feed off of the other in such a brilliant way, that you don’t feel like a third wheel? Instead of feeling left out, you find yourself mesmerized by their thought patterns and the way they just seem to click on a cylinder the rest of us miss altogether. That’s what happened to me when I took on the dynamic duo (think modern day Bat and Robin) of Kat Hillis and Rosie Thor and their recent release of DEAD & BREAKFAST which is a perfect example of how good their chemistry is.
Kym: Welcome to The Cozy Corner on Fresh Fiction, Kat and Rosiee!
Kat: Hi Kym! It’s lovely to be here!
Kym: I must confess, this is my first interview with a duo author format. What made you decide to write a series together?
Rosiee: This series really started as a series of jokes back when I first came up with the idea. It was just a title and a basic concept for a while, a few silly puns etc. but it didn’t start to feel like a real story until Kat came along. When we talked about the characters and the town, everything came together in a way it just never did for me on my own. It felt completely natural for us to do this together. Plus, it was way more fun.
Kat: When Rosiee first shared their pitch for the book, I was so mad I hadn’t thought of it myself, since it’s right up my alley. So when they proposed writing it together, I jumped at the chance.
Kym: Arthur and Sal have a bed and breakfast in Trident Falls. Every reader always wants to know, did a certain town provide the ‘model’ for Trident Falls or is it a dream town for us all? Maybe not the victims.
Rosiee: Trident Falls isn’t any one town in particular, but something of an amalgamation of the many small rural towns I’ve visited in Oregon like Sisters, Alsea, Tillamook and more. I’ve lived in this state my whole life and I have always thought the towns that were off the beaten path had a particular charm to them that deserved some love.
Kat: I grew up in a series of small towns all over the South, so I drew a little from them as we began to shape Trident Falls together.
Rosiee: We also wanted to pay homage to the many thriving queer communities that exist in small towns. Rural areas often get overlooked and are assumed to be hotbeds of bigotry and hate, but I have found just as much love and curiosity. Though Arthur and Sal encounter some of both, we wanted Trident Falls to be the kind of place that rings true to the people who live here and reflect the hopeful, vibrant, loving spaces that exist in those pockets of safety around the state.
Kym: I can relate to the small towns in Oregon! Authors often speak to themselves, or their characters and I love the sassy approach of how Arthur and Sal deal with curious visitors with ridiculous misconceptions about how vampires live their lives. Do you guys chat/write back and forth, or do you split chapters? I’m actually picturing you guys having a text chat in character in real time.
Kat: We’ve had a chat going about this book series for years and years where we share ideas and jokes (mostly jokes).
Rosiee: So much of our writing process feels like its own sort of meta shitpost. When we’re brainstorming a book, we really just tell each other jokes until a plot emerges from the silly situations we come up with. The writing process itself is obviously a bit more involved, though. We realized pretty early on that we didn’t want to swap chapters since we wanted to keep a singular POV through the whole book. Because of that, we couldn’t use the traditional co-writing strategy of each taking a character and writing their chapters. Instead, we figured out what our strengths and weaknesses were within the process and figured out a system that works well for us.
Kat: When we write, I start with a very skeletal draft and hand each chapter to Rosiee, so they can revise it into a decent shape.
Rosiee: It’s sort of the best of both worlds for us, since Kat loves drafting and I shudder at the thought of the blank page. The same is true on the other side–I really love expanding and revising something that already exists, but Kat finds that to be tedious. We both get to do the part we like and we have someone else to rely on for the parts we don’t.
Kym: LOL, you have one helluva meta shitpost! I love how you complement each other—even here;) How did you develop the characters? I’m truly fascinated about the dual process of creating such a fun group of people…ahhh creatures—whatever. I think my hubby’s a creature half the time. I guess that’s what keeps him fun;)
Kat: We knew from the start we wanted a sunshine/grump, opposites attract dynamic between our vampire husbands. Developing them started with a lot of memes and jokes, but they quickly became real people as we sat down to plot the specifics of the book.
Rosiee: We really wanted them to balance each other out. Arthur (though he would be horrified to be described as such) is quite an extreme kind of guy. He’s very rigid in his thinking and set in his ways. He’s also quite concerned with how others view him and firm in his belief that in order to be liked he has to change himself. We knew Sal needed to be a foil, so fun-loving, self-confident, always-dramatic Sal was born!
Kym: Arthur, Sal and company kinda reminded me of the 70s TV shows, The Odd Couple and The Adams Family, yet with a complete modern twist that made it fresh and original to the Cozy Mystery genre—which isn’t easy to do, so bravo! What inspired the series?
Rosiee: The original inspiration for this series came from a desire to see a cozy mystery with a paranormal lead. A lot of the stories we consumed, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural, relied on a monster-of-the-week type of format, but we wondered what it would look like if the monsters were actually the ones investigating things instead of the other way around.
Kat: We also draw a bit from Dracula, at least with the lore, and basically every funny mystery series. This book is very much in conversation with other vampire stories, which made it all the more fun to play around with.
Kym: Please tell me there is a real Rumble. Lie if there’s not.
Kat: Sadly, Rumble isn’t a real cat, but she was based on our own cats, past and present. Every cat has their own personality and quirks, so it was fun to build her as a character while drawing from our own experiences with cats.
Rosiee: Kat! Kym said to lie!! Of course there’s a real Rumble!
Kym: I knew Rumble was real—even if a bit Frankenstein-ish with character traits stolen from living creatures. There’s one thing that drives me nuts about cozies—the freaking food! You should not discuss such wonderful food that I can actually smell through my phone while reading! Seriously, cozy authors are masochists! Do you plan on providing recipes to everything Arthur makes? And can I be so bold as to ask for one? Pretty-please?
Kat: I’m a biscuit person over scones most of the time, so I’d only be able to share my family recipe for biscuits n gravy.
Rosiee: And when it comes to the kitchen, I’m more of a cook than a baker. Though I do love to eat scones! A lot of the food in the book is aspirational food–we’d very much love to eat it, too!
Kym: I know some family recipes are sworn to secrecy;) I ask all my guests, do you each have a cozy corner that is your favorite place to read?
Kat: Yes! I have a comfy recliner I curl up in to read.
Rosiee: I have a hammock in my backyard where I like to read during the summer. If I’m lucky, one of my cats may join me for snuggle time, too.
Kym: What are you working on now?
Kat: We’ve just finished up the second book in the Dead & Breakfast Mysteries series, and I’m also revising a fantasy romcom that will be out in 2027.
Rosiee: We’re so excited for readers to get their hands on book 2! It was just as much fun for us to write as book 1, and it gets into a bit more of the paranormal stuff. We can’t say much more, but it’s coming next year! And I’m also working on two other projects out next year, so I’ve got a busy few months ahead of me.
Kym: Where can our readers find you on-line?
Kat: kathillisbooks.com, where you can find links to my social media accounts.
Rosiee: I’m at rosieethor.com and on social media @rosieethor
Kym: Thank you for joining us at Fresh Fiction’s Cozy Corner!
Author photos of Kat Hillis and Rosiee Thor are courtesy of Kat Fang and Lens of Lakhani respectively.
The new vampires in town are sinking their teeth into solving a murder…
Married odd couple Arthur and Sal are totally normal. They wear sunscreen, not because the sun can kill them, but because even the undead need a skincare regimen. They eat garlic whenever they want, though it gives Sal indigestion. They can talk to creatures of the night, but only the raccoons that rifle through their garbage. Really, they don’t bite… except into delicious baked goods.
Ready to settle down and stay out of trouble, the two have opened a bed & breakfast in the idyllic, if not-so-paranormal-friendly, town of Trident Falls, Oregon. But trouble finds them when the mayor is discovered dead in their begonias with two puncture wounds in his neck. With the help of a werewolf barista, the elven town coroner, and a very human city manager, Arthur and Sal will need to prove they aren’t literally out for blood by catching a killer…
Mystery Cozy | Mystery Amateur Sleuth [ Penguin, On Sale: October 14, 2025, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593952719 / eISBN: 9780593952726 ]
Kat Hillis (she/he) is the author of offbeat queer science fiction, fantasy, and cozy mystery that makes readers ask, “What the heck did I just read?”
She earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She still lives in Alabama, where she enjoys the two weeks of tolerable weather a year.
When she’s not writing, she’s probably thinking about it or talking about it—she has been described as a jock whose sport is writing. If she’s procrastinating, she can be found drawing, reading, or binge-watching TV shows. A lifelong narrative enthusiast, she enjoys all types of gaming (tabletop RPGs, video games, board games). Her hobbies include getting emotional when she thinks too much about quantum physics, and crafting handmade soap.
Rosiee Thor began their career as a storyteller by demanding to tell their mother bedtime stories instead of the other way around. They spent their childhood reading by flashlight in the closet until they came out as queer. Now, they write stories for all ages, including young adult novels Tarnished Are The Stars and Fire Becomes Her, the picture book The Meaning of Pride, and tie-in novels for franchises like Life is Strange and Firefly. Their short fiction appears in many anthologies, including the Lambda award nominated Being Ace, and they are the editor of Why On Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology. Their debut cozy mystery, The Dead & Breakfast, is forthcoming from Berkley Press. Rosiee lives in Oregon with a dog, two cats, and an abundance of plants.
Kym Roberts writes by day and is a pro-surfer in her dreams by night. Her humor is often raunchy, her jokes are often bad, but her hunger for a story keeps the adventures coming fast. Experience the thrill & catch the wave of passion, mystery and suspense with her at her website, on Facebook, and her favorite social media site, Instagram.
Her third Scandalous Sisters book, The Wanton Widow under the pseudonym Helene Matheson releases early 2026.
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