Sorta-Interview with, um, Myself

As I’ve mentioned before, I suck at promoting myself. I have the marketing skills of an emu, and trust me, emus are notorious in the wild for their lack of self-promotion. Nonetheless, I’ve recently floundered about in the dark, bumping into things and knocking objects over in my attempt to find promotional deals and reviews and such. (Interestingly, I’ve noticed a lot about promoting oneself involves spending money; I must have given out 10 copies of Hunted Dreams over the past month.) In spite of my clumsiness, I’ve managed to score a few wins.

One of these wins was my personal favorite review from Bitten by Paranormal Romance. Although the reviewer gave my beloved Hunted Dreams only 4 out of 5 howls, the reviewer really captured the tone I tried to convey in the book. No one else has really mentioned it, which made me wonder if I’d been successful.

Not to creep out the reviewer or anything, but I’d like to engage with her rather lovely review.

Katana is one of the mentally strongest people I have read about it a long time.  She is constantly kept drifting out of one nightmare and into the next, yet somehow she manages to hold onto the thin strands of her sanity.  When Reed appears out of nowhere during one, she actually tries to rationalize his presence as part of her subconscious.  It doesn't take her too long to figure out what is going on once he nudges her in the right direction though.  

Yeah! Yay! I’m ecstatic that someone recognized the strength and emotional complexity of Katana! I wanted to make her gentle but incredibly strong. She’s been through a lot in her life, and you’d better believe she can handle anything.

Reed was a little more confusing and the plots within plots that were wrapped around him were sometimes hard to unravel - for the characters and the reader.  

Yes, I know the plot twists and turns with Reed are complex. I hope they’re still understandable and engaging.

The secondary character, Cor, was the perfect bit of stress relief throughout the whole story.  Hunted Dreams is rather dark at times, and Cor was the ray of light to keep things moving along.

I love Cor and Jade. Jade was the majorest minor character in Hunted Past, and it was a treat to bring her into this story as well. Maybe someday I’ll write a story where Jade finds her true love. Or maybe Cor, although I’d have to publish it in an entirely different genre, since she’s a lesbian. Unfortunate that LGBT romance and straight romance cannot exist side-by-side in a genre and often with the same publisher. Grumble, grumble.

Hunted Dreams is much more psychological than many paranormal romances I've read.  With almost all of our two characters interaction happening in the dream realm, the symbolism they both brought with them into the dream world was at times very thick and other times so subtle it was missed completely until the end where everything fell into place very nicely.  This was a fantastic read, but it does require a little concentration.

How sick of a puppy am I that my favorite part of this review is her calling the book dark? When writing Hunted Dreams, I kept thinking the novel skirted the edge of a deeply psychological version of the horror genre. I honestly worried it wouldn’t be publishable as a romance. You can imagine my surprise when no one ever mentioned the book’s very dark tone. That said, for folks who, like me, love some horror along with your romance, this is a psychologically twisting (twisted?) novel that, as the reviewer pointed out and because of its symbolism and plot twists, requires some concentration.