Dead Cereus by Kira Seamon | Author Interview, Giveaway, Review
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me with the information for this tour. 
Book Details
Dead Cereus by Kira K. Seamon
Published by Kira Seamon on 01/18/2022
Genres: Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Culinary, Fiction / Romance / Suspense
Format: eBook, Hardcover, Paperback
Pages: 254
Source: iRead Book Tours, Kindle Unlimited, Received from the author or publisher for review.Holy holly berries! Hot new debut author Kira Seamon sizzles with this alluring cozy mystery /romance! The world will be enchanted by Holly Jackson, a junior at Shellesby College in Massachusetts. "Hurricane Holly" creates shenanigans on the Olympic level.
This mischievous charmer has found herself in many strange messes, but this one takes the carrot cake! With her college scholarship already on frost alert, when Holly accidentally douses the college's most distinguished donors, she sees her degree and her relationship with the hot Master Gardener quickly wilting. Can Holly stand the heat in the hothouse, or is she headed to a spectacular meltdown?
Join this light-hearted romp with its plethora of plants and wonderful characters by picking up Dead Cereus today! With a murder scene hot enough to scorch her eyebrows off and a blazing love affair with her boyfriend, the unforgettable story of a certain Ms. Holly Jackson will implant itself in your heart and grow forever. Put your petal to the metal and see what all the buzz is about! Dead Cereus is to die for!
Check out these remarks from BookLife Prize: "This alluring mystery offers a brush of romance and plentiful humor, combined with abundant details about rare plants and gardening. The plot moves briskly and evenly and will keep readers engaged. The main character is energetic and enthusiastic. While the prose is somewhat choppy. it serves the tone of the story and its circumstances. The inclusion of recipes from the novel's event is a nice touch. The focus on plant life, paired with a mystery, allows this novel to stand apart. The main character is driven, kooky, anxious, and appears prone to disaster. Side characters are well crafted and great fun."
Dead Cereus, come for the mystery, stay for the food! Chocolate plays a big role in this book; you will chocolate as you've never chocolates before! Sparkling new debut author Kira Seamon makes botany hot again, one plant at a time.
PG-13: Mature subject matter
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Purchase Links for Dead Cereus
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My thoughts on Dead Cereus
The Quick Review
Kira Seamon puts a new young adult twist on the cozy mystery genre.
Holly attracts trouble like a moth to the flame. It’s inevitable she lands in the thick of a murder mystery at her college. It’s hard enough to navigate boyfriends, grades, and rivals without mixing in a dead body.
The setting is well-described and the characters feel true-to-life. The storyline compels you to keep turning the pages.
Fans of YA fiction, cozy mysteries, and chick-lit should enjoy Dead Cereus.
(More to come shortly)
I received a copy of the book for the tour. This review is my honest, unbiased opinion.
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I love to read books through my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.
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About Kira K. Seamon
Kira K. Seamon was born and raised in Hawaii. She attended the prestigious Punahou School as an award-winning honor student.
A polymath, Kira is a gold medal/state winner in piano performance and a national and two-time regional dance champion. In ten years of competing in dance competitions, she won 18 awards, including special awards from the judges and platinum awards. Additionally, she’s an award-winning photographer and has had her art accepted and sold in national and regional juried shows. She’s had over fifty newspaper cover stories about her art and is a fourteen-time grant recipient from cultural councils. She celebrated her first solo museum exhibit of her work in 2020.
Now living in Massachusetts, she was recently the inaugural artist-in-residence in Natick, Massachusetts. She received a personal letter from the Massachusetts Senate President and a Certificate of Recognition from the Massachusetts State Legislation in recognition of her grant from Framingham, Massachusetts. All of this culminated in her receiving the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, for which she appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2020.
She took a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Machu Picchu, Peru with the Punahou Alumni Association, and her travel tale about that expedition is published in the 2021 September/October edition of the Writers and Readers Magazine. Additionally, her Peru photography is the editorial feature in the 2021 fall edition of DRIFT Travel magazine.
DRIFT Travel is an upscale travel and lifestyle magazine with each issue being emailed to 4+ million digital magazine readers worldwide. Additionally, DRIFT is also part of the PressReader magazine/newspaper digital platform that puts DRIFT in thousands of hotels, cruise ships, resorts, and airlines around the world, opening the door to an additional 300 million users annually.
Kira has never met a story from Greek mythology that she didn’t love and has kept a daily journal since her teens. Dead Cereus is her first novel.
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Author Interview
What genre do you write?
I am writing a cozy mystery series called Dead Cereus. I have gotten a lot of great feedback on the tender romance between Holly and William in that book, and so I am pleased to announce that I am now looking to create a Dead Cereus romance book line too!
Do you use a pen name?
I considered that. I think it has its pros and cons. I decided on using my real name. I have been in the arts for a long time and have made contact with many library directors. Before the pandemic, I used to do flower-arranging workshops that would sell out very quickly. So I think I am known in the communities that I have worked with before, so I thought using my real name could enhance sign-up for possible book readings/signings at events in the future.
Would you like to share anything about your life?
I was born and raised in tropical Hawaii! This was indeed Paradise, and I grew up surrounded by plants, trees, and flowers, both in my home garden and in many botanical gardens my family used to visit. My Dad was an avid gardener and we had over 100 bonsai plants on tables in our backyard. Bonsais are miniature trees that you keep very small and prune into beautiful shapes. We had over 100 orchids in the trees in our garden too. We were orchid fanatics and went every weekend to orchid shows around the island.
All of this beautiful, exotic plant life impacted me greatly, and in the brutal New England winter of 2017, I found myself keenly missing all the lush greenery of my home state. I found my way to the Wellesley College greenhouse complex, in Wellesley, MA, and I fell in love the minute I walked through their doors! Here were growing all the tropical flowers and plants from my youth, despite the bitter cold temperatures outside.
This setting inspired me so greatly. It felt like it could be a good setting for a book. I created a whole world in my Dead Cereus book. It’s an enchanting tropical get-away for the reader. I know I like to revisit the world of Dead Cereus in my imagination during these long New England winters we have! Come escape to the exotic world of Dead Cereus! You’ll never want to leave.
(Cereus, pronounced “serious,” is a play on the night-blooming cereus plant. This beautiful plant blossoms only once per year, as it lives in nature in a desert environment, and to conserve energy in that inhospitable terrain, it only opens once a year, and only at night. The reason it opens at night is that the cooler evening temperatures in the desert allow the blossom to remain open for longer than it would be able to do in the broiling heat of the day. It is an enchanting plant and it plays a large role in my book!)
How do you select the names of your characters?
For this book, I had an absolute ball naming my characters. My book is set in a greenhouse amid a large college campus with many other gardens. (i.e., butterfly garden, veggie garden, botanical garden, berry garden, herb garden) As such, I thought it would be really cool if everyone had a botanical or plant-based name! The research for this was so much fun and I think that I found botanical names that integrate well with the story and (I hope!) don’t seem too forced. I have gotten tremendous feedback about the cohesiveness about the names and it has proven to be a popular aspect to the book. I included a glossary of names in the back of the book, so people can browse the origins of those special names.
Is writer’s block real?
I do think writer’s block is very real. I tend to get that when I am overloaded with caregiving responsibilities. Then even when I have a free moment, my brain is so over-taxed that nothing creative flows for me. I need some personal space to access the right mindset to write. When I am not overscheduled and have had some time to myself, the story flows freely. I find walking/hiking/exploring in nature to be my go-to remedy when I feel stuck with writer’s block. Music also helps me. I play piano and I do have my favorite pieces of music to listen to when the creativity is blocked. I find I respond well to virtuosic classical music pieces. I have a large list of favorites that I toggle between depending on my mood. I tend to know myself and can figure out if I need to be energized or inspired and they light a fire under me and the writing gets better by the moment! For my book Dead Cereus, I was obsessed with the Symphonie Espagnole by Edouard Lalo. (The third movement!). Alternatively, some days I turned to Franz Schubert’s Symphony No 9 (fourth movement). Currently, Camille Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre is doing it for me.
If asked, what would your friends and family say about you?
Haha, I think many would say I am the most intense person they ever met. I am “all in, all the time”, and I approach most things with the zeal of an Olympic athlete. I did become a national and two-time regional dance champion in my other life as a ballet dancer. That kind of zeal gets you far, though I have to be on the constant lookout for becoming a workaholic. Receiving the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in November of 2021 has definitely mellowed me somewhat. I feel I can take my foot off the gas pedal now.
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Purchase Dead Cereus online from a local book store.
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Easy Amazon Links
Dead Cereus: A charming, fa...Shop on Amazon Kindle 
Dead Cereus (Heather Moore ...Shop on Amazon Paperback 
Dead CereusShop on Amazon Hardcover
For International buyers, the US link should open to your home country’s Amazon page. Please let me know if it doesn’t.
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Giveaway!
Win a signed copy of DEAD CEREUS by Kira Kanani Seamon) (USA only) (ends Feb 24)
DEAD CEREUS Book Tour Giveaway
Please visit more stops on the tour for extra chances to win!
Full Tour Schedule
Jan 24 –Character Madness and Musing – book spotlight / giveaway
Jan 24 –Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight / giveaway
Jan 24 –Rockin’ Book Reviews – book spotlight/ guest post / giveaway
Jan 26 – Kam’s Place – book review
Jan 26 – Jazzy Book Reviews – book review / giveaway
Jan 27 – FUONLYKNEW – book spotlight / guest post / giveaway
Jan 28 – Rockin’ Book Reviews – book review / giveaway
Jan 28 –Literary Flits – book review / giveaway
Jan 31 – Gina Rae Mitchell – book review / giveaway
Feb 1 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book review / giveaway
Feb 2 – She Just Loves Books – book review / giveaway
Feb 2 – From the TBR Pile – book review / giveaway
Feb 3 – Book Corner News and Reviews – book review /giveaway
Feb 4 – @twilight_reader – book review
Feb 4 – Sefina Hawke’s Books – book spotlight
Feb 7 – StoreyBook Reviews – book review / giveaway
Feb 7 – Books for Books – book spotlight
Feb 8 – Cheryl’s Book Nook – book review / giveaway
Feb 9 – PuzzlePaws Blog – book review / giveaway
Feb 10 – Olio by Marilyn – book spotlight / author interview
Feb 10 – Olio by Marilyn – book review / giveaway
Feb 11 – Pause for Tales – book review / giveaway
Feb 11 – Reading is My Passion – book spotlight / giveaway
Feb 11 – Books are a Blessing – book review / giveaway
Feb 14 – Westveil Publishing – book review / guest post / giveaway
Feb 15 – Pick a Good Book – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Feb 16 – The Momma Spot – book review / giveaway
Feb 17 – Splashes of Joy – book review / author interview / giveaway
Feb 18 – Stephanie Jane – book review / giveaway
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Thank you so much! I enjoyed reading your review.