PT Michelle - Brightest Kind of Darkness
• Pub Date: June 27, 2011
• Publisher: Patrice Michelle
• Format: Ebook 357 pages
• Age Range: Young Adult
Nara Collins is an average sixteen-year-old, with one exception: every night she dreams the events of the following day. Due to an incident in her past, Nara avoids using her special gift to change fate…until she dreams a future she can’t ignore.
After Nara prevents a bombing at Blue Ridge High, her ability to see the future starts to fade, while people at school are suddenly being injured at an unusually high rate.
Grappling with her diminishing powers and the need to prevent another disaster, Nara meets Ethan Harris, a mysterious loner who seems to understand her better than anyone. Ethan and Nara forge an irresistible connection, but as their relationship heats up, so do her questions about his dark past.
Mickey: Hi there! Thanks for being on the blog today. Please introduce yourself!
PT: Hi Mickey! Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm P.T. Michelle, author of the YA dark paranormal romance series Brightest Kind of Darkness.
Mickey: Tell us a little bit about your book, Brightest Kind of Darkness.
PT: Brightest Kind of Darkness is about a girl who can see her entire next day via her dreams the night before, and the boy she meets, who never stars in her dreams but seems to know her better than anyone. Brightest Kind of Darkness is full of adventure, mystery, romance and a bit of horror too.
Mickey: You also have the sequel, Lucid, coming out. How do you decide when to end a book in a series and how to begin the next one?
PT: Ah, that's a great question! I think it's a bit easier when you know the next book is going to be about different characters, but set in the same world you created in the first book. That way, in book one, you can focus on wrapping up your current main characters’ issues/conflicts within the current book and then carry over the mystery/subplot/external conflicts you introduced in book one into book two through the new characters' eyes.
When you're writing a series where the same main characters are in several books (like I’m doing with BKoD), then you have to pick and choose which internal issues and which external obstacles will be resolved/overcome in the current book and which ones will carry over and sometimes morph into deeper ones before they’re resolved in the next book or even into the third book!
Mickey: Under your other name, Patrice Michelle, you write "dark, sexy, action-packed paranormal and contemporary romances." When did you make the decision to write more than one age group and genre? How do you keep it separate?
PT: I made the decision after I beta read for an author friend who writes dark paranormal YA. I loved it and I was hooked! I loved the freedom with the storylines in YA. I could write a journey story, or an issue story, or a coming of age story. I loved the idea of writing about first time love and how a character would feel falling in love if he/she didn't have a past history to compare it to. Plus, as a bonus, I could still include irresistible guys in my stories...they'd just be younger and with less "life experience". I read as many young adult books as I could get my hands on for several years before I wrote my first story. BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS wasn't my first book, but it's the one I felt so strongly about that I pursued publication.
As for keeping my pen names separate, I try to keep them as separate as possible. I have two websites, two twitters and two Facebook Fan Pages. I do cross-promote my YA releases to my romance readers (since my YAs have romance too), but I don't cross promote my romances to my YA readers. Balancing the two pen names isn't always easy, but I try my best. I’m sure my YA readers are wondering why it has taken me so long to finish up LUCID, but after I released BKoD, I edited, rewrote and expanded four of my back list romance novels, then re-released them before I was able to focus full time on writing LUCID. It’s almost done! Yay!
Mickey: The cover for BKoD is gorgeous. How much of a say do you have in cover design?
PT: Thank you! I love BKoD's cover too. I had 100% say in creating the cover. I found the pictures, drew up the concept to exactly what I wanted, and then I hired a cover artist to make my vision a reality. I'm thrilled with the cover, because it conveys exactly what goes on within BKoD!
Mickey: How many books are planned for the BKoD series?
PT: Right now the plan is for three books, with a possible fourth.
Mickey: What idea/book do you wish you'd thought of/written first?
PT: I loved The Hunger Games. I thought it was such a unique concept. But I wouldn't say I wish I'd thought of it first, because if I'd written it, the stories would probably have turned out differently. That's the thing with writers...give five writers the same basic three-line idea/concept for a story, tell them to run with it, and you'll get five completely different books out of it. :)
Mickey: Any plans for audio books? If you could choose anyone to narrate your novels, who would you pick?
PT: At this point I haven't thought about audios, but that's something I’m definitely considering for the future. If I could choose anyone to narrate BKoD, I think Amanda Seyfried would make a great Nara.
Mickey: Final question: Zombies, vampires, or werewolves?
PT: I'm not a big zombie fan, so it's a toss up between vampires and werewolves. While there are things I like about vampires such as mind-manipulation power and speed, I think I'd have to pick werewolves for their strength and shape-shifting ability.
Mickey: Thanks for being here today!! Any final thoughts?
PT: Thank you for having me on your blog, Mickey! I'd just like to say thank you to all the readers who've picked up a copy of BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS, posted the cover on their blogs, reviewed it and told others about it. Thank you so much for loving Ethan and Nara’s story!
P.T. Michelle is the young adult pseudonym of Patrice Michelle, author of fifteen romance novels and novellas. When P.T. isn’t writing, she can usually be found reading or taking pictures of landscapes, sunsets and anything beautiful or odd in nature.
Find P.T.
That series question had my heart in my throat for a moment there...VERY glad to hear Lucid (and the one or two books following) will be about Nara and Ethan.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much to both Ms. Michelle for doing this interview and for Mickey for hosting it.
Brightest Kind of Darkness is one of the best books I have read this year, and I am excited that it should get as many people to read it as possible; it is just fabulous!
Sometimes, I get in book ruts. I feel like I've read the same thing time and again. So when I read the synopsis for Brightest Kind of Darkness, I was thrilled to have something new and intriguing to dig into.
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