Book of the Month! Kait Nolan's Forsaken by Shadow

We are so proud to have as our first Book of the Month one of our good friends, Kait Nolan and her novel; Forsaken by Shadow! 

Kait was most gracious to sit down with us and discuss her paranormal novella!

Read the interview then find out at the bottom of this blog how to win 1 of 3 FREE copies of Forsaken By Shadow!

Do you remember your first paranormal romance you ever read?

Oh I had to think hard about that one.  First one was Vampire Diaries: The Awakening—immediately followed by the rest of the series.  This was back when they were originally released in the early 90s, before the vamp craze, before Stephanie Meyer, back when YA as a genre was mostly bleh.  But L. J. Smith was my salvation.  A cabinmate handed it to me at camp, and I was hooked.

Did that book affect you or was it another that convinced you to write paranormal?
I don’t know that it was specifically The Awakening so much as all of L.J. Smith’s books.  She wrote paranormal romance YA, which was right up my alley.  And at the time she was one of a very few.  What I liked about her books was that she wrote believable teenagers instead of the overly moralizing, idiotic ones featured in most YA of the time, which had characters with the intellect of twelve year olds and the hormones of college students.  Smith’s books had heroines I could connect with, and by the time I’d ripped through everything she ever wrote, I wanted more.  There WASN’T more in the genre at the time, so at 14, I started writing more of what I wanted.

So which do you like more?  The para normal part or the romance part? LOL
While I absolutely have a gooey nougat center and a serious soft spot for romance, I think I have to go with the paranormal.  I love how it takes me out of my life, out of the real world.  Real life is often dull and boring and hard to deal with.  Evil day jobs, bills, taxes, politics.  It’s all, just…ugh.  I love the paranormal because it allows for an escape of that.  It’s like the ultimate in escapist activites.

You talk a lot about 'vamp weary' how is Forsaken by Shadow's mythology fresh?
Well neither my hero nor heroine are common figures in the traditional paranormal.  My heroine, Embry, is a firecaster and Gage, the hero, is a Shadow Walker.  When I started this series, I was really tired of the same old same old, so I started thinking about what I hadn’t seen, and that’s where these two came from.  While you will see some of the usual suspects over the course of future books, for the most part, I like to focus on paranormal races and creatures that are unfamiliar.

Why did you pick the U.F.C. as a focus of Forsaken? Do you have personal experience or just a fan?
Well the Shadow Walkers are the special ops group of my paranormal world.  Gage was trained to be a warrior.  I got to thinking, well, what would a warrior who’d lost his memory DO with himself.  It seemed natural enough that he’d fall into fighting.  I’m a big fan of mixed martial arts, and I love shows like Fight Science and Deadliest Warrior, so the UFC connection was pretty natural from there.

Do you remember the moment you decided to write Forsaken by Shadow?

I can’t say that I remember the specific moment, but I’d had it in my mind that I wanted to write something shorter than a novel to put out for cheap in order to start building a name for myself.  I was finishing up a novel about wolf-shifters and started thinking about the world I’d created, one in which humans are forbidden to know that the paranormal exists.  It’s the number one law in their world.  The ones that do find out are usually summarily executed in ways that look like accidents.  But I started wondering about what would happen if someone found out and had his memory wiped.  That’s where Gage came from.  The story itself came fast after that.  I had a full and solid outline in three days (which was totally unheard of at the time).

Was the experience easier or more difficult than you thought?
Considerably easier than prior or subsequent projects, as it happens.  Some stories just take you by the throat and BOOM.  You say “Yes ma’am” and sit your fanny at the keyboard and go.  I have never had a story come easier than this one.  I spewed it out, and with relatively few revisions, it was actually ready to go.  The whole thing spoiled me, actually!

Why a novella?  Why not start with a full novel (hint, hint, we think your readers want more!)
Well, when I started out with the project, I still had every intention of going the traditional route for publication.  In the earliest stages, I planned to release it for free just to get my name out there and generate some interest in the series I planned to pitch to New York.  But you reach a certain point where it’s hard to give away something you’ve invested so much time in, so I decided to sell it for a buck and see what happened.  There are absolutely full novels planned in the series, which you’ll actually see a lot quicker now that I’ve made the full shift to indie.

Is Forsaken the first of a series or are you starting fresh on your next book?

It is the first of two, possibly three, novellas to introduce the Mirus world.  The second novella, Devil’s Eye, should be released in late December or early January.  I have quite a few books planned in that series, but my next project is actually an unrelated paranormal YA called Red that takes the Red Riding Hood mythology and turns it totally on its ear.  Then it’ll be back to the Mirus for either a third novella or the first full length novel in the series, depending on who speaks up to have their story told.

What is one thing about Forsaken that you've never told another reviewer that your readers should know about?

Well, one thing I don’t remember ever mentioning before is that my model for Gage was Christian Kane.  He did this great MMA episode on Leverage—love that show—right around the time I was drafting Forsaken and I thought, there he is.  There’s my hero.  

Kait Nolan is a writer of action-packed paranormal romance that features a fresh and inventive mythology.  No sparklay vamps here!  Her debut release, Forsaken By Shadow, is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Sony, Scribd, Amazon UK, Kobo, BooksOnBoard, Diesel, and SpringBrook Digital. It is available in audio from Audible, BooksOnBoard, Crossroad Press, Simply Audiobooks, and SpringBrook Digital.

She can be found at her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, MySpace, and Pots and Plots (her cooking blog).

We at ParaYourNormal would love to thank Kait for her time to swing by and discuss Forsaken with us!  If you have a book and would like to have it reviewed, just email us at parayournormal (at) aol (dot) com or DM or shout us out on our Twitter stream @parayournormal :-)

And now for the give-away.  To make it slightly more interesting then just following the blog and leaving a comment below we thought a little scavenger's hunt might be fun!

To enter:

Follow this blog.

Follow this link to download 50 Free pages of Forsaken by Shadow!

Read it over and leave a comment (please include your Twitter handle so we can easily identify you) below with the first sentence of Chapter 2 of Forsaken by Shadow!

And voila!  You are entered! We will announce the winner on next week's radio show so tune in!

Want to enter twice?  No worries, just hit the 'tweet this' button at the bottom of this blog for a second entry!

Listen to our radio show Dec 6th to hear who won! 

Until next week!