Patti O'Shea's Blog

In the Darkest Night is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the National Readers Choice Awards!!! Woot!

I was so excited when I got the call, I kind of shrieked into the phone. And then I babbled. I hope the poor coordinator recovered from the experience quickly. Normally, I’m much more low-key when I hear one of my books finaled, but not this time.

Some authors talk about the book of their heart, singular, but I have the books of my heart. Plural. Maybe I fall in love too easily, but of my eight full-length novels, I’d call three of them the books of my heart. In the Darkest Night is one of them.

The story is Kel’s (the hero) and it’s about how he changes and reaches a point where he can accept help. You see, he has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and instead of getting help, he’s stonewalled everyone, including his twin brother who has always been his best friend. Kel was held captive and tortured (before the book opens) and he’s trying to lock that away, pretend it never happened, but he can’t suppress the memories or his guilt.

His heroine is Farran. She has her own issues, and in the months she’s been on the run, has developed new ones. She grows over the course of the book, too, of course, but it’s Kel’s story and he’s got the bigger changes to make.

I loved these two. They’re both emotionally wounded, and in each other, they find a kindred spirit, someone who can accept them as they are, baggage and all. This book wasn’t easy to write, not when the characters had such big issues, but I knew from the minute I met Kel that his story had to be told.

Of course, there aren’t only issues. There’s magic, action, adventure, and two people falling in love with each other even though neither one of them want that. I love adventure and romance, so those have to be there.

It means a lot to me that this book is a National Readers Choice Finalist. Thank you!

In the Darkest Night is a Hughie Award nominee for Best Unique Paranormal! Also in my category are Christine Feehan and Emma Holly, both writers I read and love, so I am in very awesome company!

There are a lot of awards out there, but being mentioned for a Hughie Award is really cool because it comes from readers. When I say it’s an honor just to be nominated, I mean it. Truly, it is an honor to be nominated especially when I look at the other two authors in my category. Talk about a whoa moment. So thank you to the ReBeLs!

I’ve been lucky to be able to write more than one book of my heart. In the Darkest Night is the third that falls into this category for me. Kel, the hero, was broken and he’s withdrawn from the world and that includes his family. I knew as soon as he showed up while I was writing his brother’s story that Kel would have a book. He fascinated me, and while I knew pretty early on that he’d been tortured, I didn’t know why or what, exactly, had happened. I wanted to find out.

I saw comments online from a couple of readers who said matching Kel up with Farran was predictable, but I guess I’m slow because I didn’t know who his heroine was. I think I still have the email I sent to one of my writing buddies telling her that I’d just learned it was Kel and Farran and expressing my shock.

In every book, one character changes more than the other and I call it their book. This one belonged to Kel. Yes, Farran changed and grew, too, but Kel did the heavy duty changing. He needed to.

There were actually a lot of surprises for me with Darkest Night. First surprise was who his heroine was. The other big shock was what–specifically–about his time held captive caused him the biggest problem. I think I learned this big secret a couple of scenes before I had to write the part where he reveals it to Farran. The rest of the surprises were smaller, things like Kel being afraid of the dark or being branded, but they interested me nearly as much as the big ones.

Anyway, I loved this h/h and writing their story was an intense experience for me. Receiving this nomination means a lot. Thanks!