Featured Interview With Mistral Dawn
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am a thirty-something gal who has lived on both coasts of the US but somehow never in the middle. Currently, I’m residing in the Southeast US with my kitty cats (please spay or neuter! :-)) where I work as a hospital drudge and attend graduate school. Taken By The Huntsman is my first effort at writing fiction and if it is well received I have ideas for several more novels and short-stories in the series.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’m dyslexic and I had a really hard time learning how to read when I was a kid. Timothy Zahn’s continuation of the Star Wars series is probably the reason I’m literate today. If my imagination hadn’t been captured when I was eight years old by the characters and universe that George Lucas created and Timothy Zahn expanded on it’s possible I wouldn’t have had the motivation to expend the effort it took for me to learn to read. Since that age I could usually be found with my nose stuck in a sci-fi/fantasy novel of some description. 😉
I didn’t start writing fiction until September 2014. The inspiration for my first book, Taken By The Huntsman, came from a dream I had after a rather spirited debate with an online friend about the nature of consent (and some other political issues I won’t bore you with). When I woke up I thought about the dream and realized it might make an interesting story (as well as provide me with a soap box ;-)). I texted a friend and asked her if she thought the idea had merit. She said she did and so I wrote the first couple of chapters and emailed them to her asking her to read them and tell me if she was bored yet. She was kind enough to say that she wasn’t bored and that she’d like to read the rest of the story, so I wrote it. The ideas for the next few books and short stories came from characters who came to me and told me that they deserved a story too, and it was my job to write them. So I will! 🙂
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
The Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Romance genres are my favorite because they provide an adventure and (almost always) a little excitement. There’s something about the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre that captures the imagination and takes you to a whole new world. That’s what I’m looking for in a story: an escape from reality. I read very little contemporary fiction, because I don’t want to spend more time in the “real world;” I want an escape. 🙂
My favorite authors are Karen Chance, Tracy St. John, Jeaniene Frost, Lois McMaster Bujold, Karen Marie Moning, Janet Kagan, Timothy Zahn, and Michael Crichton. To name a few. 😉
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The story is about a lonely, human woman (Cassie) who has been rejected for various reasons for her whole life and the Erlking, a hundreds of thousands of years old Fae, who has been Fairie’s “top cop” for all of his life. Both of these characters are lonely and isolated, and both of them have difficulty trusting others. They are united in an unbreakable, soul-mate bond created by a goddess, but only the Erlking can consciously feel this bond. While Cassie feels drawn to the Erlking, she cannot (as a human) consciously feel and identify the soul-mate bond so the Erlking must convince her to trust him and give their relationship a chance. Naturally, hilarity, hijinks, and adventure ensue.
As I said, the inspiration for my book came from a debate with a friend about the nature of consent, so there is a lot of ruminating by the characters about what constitutes consent. Taken By The Huntsman also introduces other questions about right and wrong. This isn’t done in manner to browbeat readers or proselytize to them, but in a way to make them think about and question their own views. Most of these questions are left open for the reader to answer for themselves, but my goal was to make people reflect on what they take as a “given” and under what circumstances various actions might be justified. Plus there’s quite a few steamy scenes. 😉
My major goal with this book was to entertain people and tantalize them with the “romantic moments,” but I also hoped readers might find a few ideas that would cause them to think about their own views. If Taken By The Huntsman causes someone to go “Hmmm?” even once while reading it, that would make me ecstatic.
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