Heroine Interview from The Color of Sorrow Isn’t Blue by Sharon K. Souza with a Giveaway

» Posted on Feb 5, 2015 in Blog | Comments Off on Heroine Interview from The Color of Sorrow Isn’t Blue by Sharon K. Souza with a Giveaway

This week I’m hosting Jill Lynn with Falling for Texas, Sharon K. Souza with The Color of Sorrow Isn’t Blue, and Mary Ellis with The Last Heiress (US and Canada only). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on your post with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (Feb. 1st) evening.

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Interview with the heroine from The Color of Sorrow Isn’t Blue by Sharon K. Souza:

1. Bristol, tell me the most interesting thing about you.

Most people find it interesting that I design a line of greeting cards called “Baby Talk®.” I use the profile of my beautiful baby girl, Kinsey, for all the cards, which include baby shower, baby congrats, birthday, thinking of you, and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards, as well as assorted birth announcements. What no one talks about is the fact that the success of Baby Talk comes too late to matter. Still, those cards are a lifeline to me.

2. What do you do for fun?

You have to realize my life is one huge Before and After. Before Kinsey disappeared, and after Kinsey disappeared. There isn’t much fun in our lives these days, just ask my husband, David.

But for nearly four incredible years, Kinsey provided our entertainment on a regular basis. She could make us laugh, even when we felt like pulling out our hair when we had to put her back in bed a dozen times a night. Oh, the reasons she could invent for having to get up “just one mo’ time, Mommy.”

And every discovery was amazing through Kinsey’s eyes, be it snails, rainbows, or the magic of popcorn. Life was a wonder for Kinsey. It still is. I know it is. It has to be.

3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?

I can’t make myself put away the Handy Manny pajamas that came out of the dryer the day after Kinsey went missing. They’re boy’s pajamas, but what can I say, Kinsey loves Handy Manny, thanks to her cousins Eli and Sam. I folded them and put them at the foot of her bed … ready for her to put on when she comes home. They probably won’t fit her now, and that’s fine, I’ll buy her a new pair, or a dozen. I can’t tell you how many times a day I run my fingers over the soft flannel of those pjs, how many times I rub her blanket across my cheek.

There are those who say I’m in denial.

There’s a lot to be said for denial.

4. What are you afraid of most in life?

That God would punish Kinsey for my carelessness, my stupidity, my sin. I know in my head that’s not his nature. But in my heart I’m so afraid.

Beyond that, I’m terrified of that one phone call that tells us she’s been found, but not.

5. What do you want out of life?

I used to have quite a list, which included things like success, comfort, a degree of wealth, happiness. Now it all seems so trivial. What do I want out of life? My baby girl back. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Else.

6. What is the most important thing to you?

Kinsey. Period.

7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?

I do read, yes. My favorite author is Elizabeth Berg. I’ve read all of her books. Oddly enough, it took me until that weekend to read What We Keep. I don’t know how I avoided it all those years, but I was beyond amazed to see how it paralleled the lives of my sister Ainsley and me—two sisters whose mother deserted them. The same thing happened to Ginny and Sharla—the girls in Elizabeth’s book. I picture their mother driving away in a long, sleek,1950s Cadillac with tailfins, leaving a trail of expensive perfume in her wake. Not our mother. Teri loaded up what was important to her, threw it in the back of a VW Bug, and hit the road, never to look back. Growing up, we never played Slug Bug on road trips, for obvious reasons. But we did have this game we played, and still do, making up names for imaginary sisters we’d never have, always starting with C, because A and B were already taken. We were convinced our mother left because she feared our father wanted the two of them to procreate their way through the alphabet. And who could blame her, with two babies in two years, whose names started with A, then B, and a husband who read Baby Name books like some men read the Farmer’s Almanac. Silly, maybe, but the idea wasn’t ours. Its genesis came from our stepmother, Sissy. Or maybe it was Dad. Whoever started it, what kind of reason is that to run off and leave your two baby girls?

Funny, I have a mother who left and a daughter taken. I feel like a magnet in reverse, if there is such a thing.

8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Whatever it is about me that repels the ones I love.

9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

Sissy, who was a fifth grade teacher for three decades, believed thirty students and two stepdaughters was enough for any one person to handle. Hence, no pets in our household. David and I always said we’d get a pet for Kinsey, but we never got around to it.

That doesn’t mean we won’t.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

Oh, Lord, is there any doubt? I’d go back to that day, and I wouldn’t make the awful mistake I made. I do, in fact, go back to that day on a regular basis. I live there now.