Bookpleasures.com is excited to have as our guest Kathryn Brown Ramsperger. Kathy is an award-winning author renowned for her captivating novels that explore universal themes with intense authenticity. 

Her debut novel, The Shores of Our Souls, published by TouchPoint Press, has received widespread acclaim, earning two America's Book Awards—one for debut excellence and another for its remarkable cover. 

It was also recognized by Foreword Indies for its outstanding portrayal of multicultural fiction and awarded a coveted five-star rating from Reader's Favorites for its exploration of social issues.

Kathy's literary voice is rooted in the rich Southern storytelling tradition, reflecting her South Carolina lineage. 

She graduated from Hollins University, where she studied under esteemed writers such as Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Eudora Welty, and holds a graduate degree from George Washington University. 

Her writing journey began at a young age when she won her first university award at 16 for a captivating short story, The Gossamer Thread.

With a global perspective, Kathy delves into themes of multicultural relationships, social justice, immigration, and the humanitarian world. 

Her second novel, A Thousand Flying Things, was a Faulkner Wisdom Literary Award finalist.

Beyond her writing achievements, Kathy has worked in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and contributed articles to esteemed publications like National Geographic and Kiplinger magazines.

She also reviews multicultural and international books for The New York Journal of Books.

Kathryn's talents extend beyond the literary realm. She is a mezzo-soprano, an intuitive and creative book coach, and an active member of various professional affiliations, including The Authors' Guild, the Independent Book Publishers Association, and the International Association of Business Communicators.

Her commitment to making a positive impact is evident through her generous donations, as she contributes half of her proceeds from the paperback version of The Shores of Our Souls to support refugees and immigrants in the Middle East and Africa.

Currently residing in Maryland with her husband and feline fur baby Rhapsody the Rhapsicle, Kathy embraces a life filled with exploration and learning. 

She has traveled to every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and dined with celebrated artists like author Marita Golden and musician-writer Kinky Friedman. 

She continues to leave a profound impact on the literary world and beyond.

Good day, Kathy and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Kathy: Thanks for this great opportunity to let readers know more about my novels, Norm.

Norm: Is  A Thousand Flying Things a sequel or a standalone book in the A Bridge Between Shores women’s fiction series?

Kathy: A Thousand Flying Things is a bit of both. It's a standalone sequel. I want people to be able to read it with or without reading The Shores of Our Souls.

I feel they'll get more out of either novel if they read both, but I'm sure that they don't have to. 

A Thousand Flying Things takes place in 1991, a full decade after the first novel, and my characters have transformed in 10 years' time.

My protagonist Dianna has a completely different career, and she's no longer in the United States. She's been working as a humanitarian in Africa.

In Shores, she was a researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Meeting Qasim catalyzed both of them to change and follow different paths, and they still think of each other. But that's all you need to know to begin Flying Things. 

Norm: What type of readers would likely enjoy it?

Kathy:  If you want an inspirational novel that explores all facets of love--romantic, familial, of humanity, of self--you'll enjoy my novel. Book clubs tend to love the conversation it stimulates.

People who like to travel, even if they can't leave the U.S., enjoy learning about other countries and cultures.

More women than men have read it, but men who have read it come to me asking questions, which I love to answer.

International adoptive parents resonate with the story, as do women who have worked overseas. I would love to have university students read it also and to have a conversation with them.

Of course, at its heart it's a multicultural love story, though it's not romance genre fiction. It's about how war divides and love heals, whether we end up together or not. I write to connect and to open conversations. 

Norm: What is the setting of the book A Thousand Flying Things?

Kathy:  The novel opens in a displaced persons camp in Southern Sudan. Dianna suspects that the camp is there to hide the training of child soldiers.

She falls ill and travels to Nairobi for hospital care. Then she journeys back home to the U.S. for family reasons, first to North Carolina then back to Manhattan.

The novel has a tiny glimpse of Beirut, Lebanon. If you'd like more of Beirut, then you can pick up The Shores of Our Souls.

Norm: What is the significance of the title A Thousand Flying Things in the context of the story?

Kathy: There's a Sudanese saying that is much like ours, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." 

The Sudanese say: "Better a bird in the hand than a thousand flying things." 

My novel is about choices we all have in life. We may have a lot of options flying around, but not all of them are right for us as individuals.

Often, we humans think we're choosing when we're actually running, and that running can lead us to more choices, which can leave us overwhelmed.

Dianna has matured, but her subconscious still has her running away from her feelings. Humanitarian work has toughened her but also strengthened the urge to run from emotion.

The novel opens with her running. But soon events and people will force her to stop running and choose. We have to choose to truly fly. 

Norm: What motivates Dianna's actions, who is the main protagonist in your story?

Kathy: Unconditional love. Dianna, my protagonist, has a big heart, and she wants to help others. She just needs to realize that she needs others' help, too.

Dianna had a traumatic childhood, with an absent father and a mentally and physically ill mother. She learned to rely on herself, and she's strong and able.

She's a resilient survivor, even in the worst of environments. But that strength can also make her distrust more than she needs to.

Until a child named Khalil "steals" her stony heart, and opens her up to love again. I always think about the Grinch and how his heart grew from a child showing him unconditional love.

We don't have to save the world all the time. We just need to love it, and love each other, one person at a time. And by love, I don't mean lack of boundaries.

I mean empathy. Dianna's empathy grows in this novel, and it opens her eyes to a choice that has been there all along. 

Norm: Why is Dianna sent to Kenya, and what threats does she face there?

Kathy: Dianna works in a camp that is one thing on the outside, another thing clandestinely. A warlord runs this camp.

She catches on to the warlord's true intentions early on, and when he realizes she knows what's going on, he sends her on a wild goose chase across the region.

She ends up very ill, and is transported to a Nairobi hospital. As soon as she's recuperated enough, she tries to get an American visa for the young boy Khalil she's teaching, as she suspects he's being groomed as a child soldier (which may or may not be true).

She bumps into her old love Qasim in the American Embassy in Nairobi. He warns her not to return to S. Sudan, as her life is in danger.

But her reputation has followed her from S. Sudan to Kenya. In Nairobi, she faces a similar danger. It's common these days to have sniper attacks or bomb threats, but they were rare in the 1990s, no matter where you lived.

The book contains the stirrings of this sort of conflict, and Dianna has to face up to it. I leave it up to the reader to decide where the threats are coming from. 

Norm: How does the theme of love and cultural differences play a role in the narrative?

Kathy: Those themes are around every turn. Dianna is from the Southern United States. Her family is in North Carolina. But as soon as she arrives in Manhattan in Shores, she is exposed to people from scores of countries.

She falls in love with a man from Lebanon, who comes with his own opinions and responsibilities.

Their love leads her to taking the risk to leave her country entirely, to fulfill a dream to travel and help people. 

Dianna learns that you can't help anyone until you try to see the world through their eyes, to walk a kilometer in their shoes.

She first learns to care about the people of Africa through her work, and she's done that for a decade when the novel opens. But this warlord is a match for her. He's tough to get along with, and impossible to trust. She only understands what's going on, what motivates him, once she's back in her own country, once she's "walked a mile" in her mother's shoes.

That's when she begins to realize she can do more good with the people who surround her every day, that she can help her neighbors from other countries no matter where she lives, and she heals. 

Only then is she ready to let Qasim's love in once more. He's also healed over the past decade.

They've both taken a hard road to healing but that means they've learned a lot, about each other, about what's important in the world. 

We humans think we are free from prejudice, but our perspectives and biases are woven in the fabric of our upbringing, no matter where we live.

The only way to bridge those cultural differences  is to get to know one another better. To feel uncomfortable, and cross the bridge.  And that is a demonstration of unconditional, non-judgmental love.

What better way to portray these themes than through a love story in the midst of global conflict?

Norm: In what ways does the book explore the concept of healing and coming home again?

Kathy:  Even though Dianna has run from her troubled family, you can only run so far. What most people that move far away from their family don't realize is that their family travels with them, inside of their minds.

We often need to come back home, at least metaphorically, to heal our childhood wounding. It's tough to tell you how this happens in the novel without spoiling the plot for those who haven't read it yet.

I'll just say that Dianna returns to a new version of the life in the U.S. she once had, and she must face the family she's left and make some heartbreaking (and heart-ening) decisions.

Coming home helps her heal, and healing helps her love. The world is not as unsafe a place as she presumes it to be, and she's strong enough to face it no matter what it brings her way. 

Norm: How do you portray resilience and optimism in Dianna?

Kathy: That's a great question. I hope I've succeeded. Dianna never gives up her quest to help the people of S. Sudan, even after she returns to the States. She's incredibly strong in Africa, of course.

She's a survivor, and she stays because she feels she's the children's best hope for survival. There's a passage in the book.

Dianna is filing her nails as she waits for the children to show up for "class":

"Funny how [the emery board's] rough, sandy surface, which echoes this world but reminds her of home, comforts her."

The children don't understand why she needs this funny "stick."

"Time and again, Dianna has explained. Time and again, the children fail to understand. The children may learn to read before they learn the use of a manicure utensil.

Yet still, she files. It is her statement of faith."

I used this scene to show Dianna's patience and persistence. She's not about to give up on her mission. 

Once she gets home, she has a brief downturn. She's worried about the child left behind in the camp, and she's sad about the trauma she's come back to resolve in her family.

She can't get a job at first.  Yet she never gives up. She continues to try to find Khalil, and she helps the immigrants around her in New York. 

I hope I've portrayed her as someone who never gives up on the people she cares about or her hope for peace and cooperation in the world. That piece of her is who I am.

Norm: How did you incorporate well-researched settings into the women's fiction series A Bridge Between Shores?

Kathy: So much of both novels are derivations of my own life as a humanitarian reporter for 25 years.

I spent time in Nairobi, southern and eastern Africa, and Beirut, and I was frustrated that I learned so much more from people in these regions than could fit in a newspaper quote or a 30-second news slot.

(I also need to state here that none of my characters are real. It's what I learned in my interviews that is.)

I always say the plot and characters are imagined, but the love is real. I also asked for sensitive beta readers to make sure I wasn't off on my portrayal of characters.

Though I was never in S. Sudan, the more I read about it (both through my time at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and after.

For my writing research) the more I realized it resembled Rwanda: genocide, child soldiers, tribal and religious warfare, land disputes.

I felt too close emotionally to Rwanda (because I'd reported on its civil war) to write from that required neutral place.

Plus, I liked all the different cultural aspects of Sudan and S. Sudan: Muslim, Christian, and tribal.

A list of the books that helped me most are in a bibliography at the end of my novel, as well as a timeline of events in S. Sudan and in Lebanon so readers can connect with the history of the places.

As far as the love story, let's just say that I dated before I got married. 

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and A Thousand Flying Things?

Kathy: Thanks so much for asking, Norm. You can find out a lot at MY WEBSITE, There's a book club list of questions and a press kit for downloading.

You'll enjoy my blog, too. My book is available both online (Amazon, B&N, and Bookshop) and at Indie bookstores. I'm an advocate for small independent bookstores, and I'd love to read at some of them.

I'm @kathyramsperger on most social media, and I'm on Tik Tok @kathyramsperger5. 

Norm: What is next for Kathryn Brown Ramsperger?

Kathy: Writing and Traveling. I'm so excited that my books are doing well, and I'll just continue writing more books. It's been a dream for a long time.

I've written a memoir about my early years in university and career, which I'll be pitching soon, and I have just begun a novel about a Victorian psychic investigative journalist.

But it's early in the launch of this novel, and I'm enjoying being a podcast and interview guest. I hope to come to an indie bookstore or book club during a small book tour this autumn.

Let me know if you'd like me to visit at MY WEBSITE. I'm so happy to be able to start traveling again! 

Norm: As we wind up our interview, can you provide a brief overview of your writing process and how it has evolved throughout the A Bridge Between Shores women's fiction series, specifically with A Thousand Flying Things, and how it has influenced your growth as an author?

Kathy: My stories begin with an image in my mind. I can visualize the characters, their actions, and their motivations from there, as well as some of the plot. I write my first draft just as if I were watching a movie.

I write the first chapter, then the middle chapter (which mirrors back to the transformation that takes place in my main characters since the book's beginning), and an end chapter.

That gives me guideposts that I can arc the story toward. 

It's the subsequent drafts where the plot and structure really take form. Plot was not my forte when I was a young writer. I was more into what made my characters tick.

Now, I try different forms of outlines to figure out the correct structure of the novel. My favorite outlining form is Jennie Nash's "Inside Outline."

It allows the character's motivations and actions to drive the next plot point. I've also spent years as a developmental editor and creativity coach, so that has helped me figure out what works and what doesn't (most of the time), and so I created Step Into Your Story! (TM), which involves left-brained outlining and right-brained visualization.

We actually step into the story and see what we were missing from the outside. 

To summarize: I write the first draft of a novel very quickly, but I have a lot of drafts. I love to revise, but hate to proofread. I have a different focus for every draft.

One of these drafts involves believability of place and culture. I've always used interviews as a way of buttressing my own observations and perspectives, but now it's formal in the publishing world.

I'm so happy sensitivity readers are a formal part of the process of writing now. In Shores, I didn't have the formal sensitivity readers, but I sought them out.

Writing a good book has become infinitely easier in the last decade because we have so many resources with just a click on a computer. I always write to connect and start conversations.

That's always in the back of my mind.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors