April Fools

In honor of April Fool’s Day, I’m going to let you in on a little joke I’ve played on the poor protagonist of my new novella, Night Shift.

Here’s the thing. I have always loved the paranormal. Some of the first movies I remember watching as a young kid were the old black-and-white Dracula and Frankenstein films. (No, I wasn’t scared. Disney movies sometimes upset me, though.) I was never one to play with dolls very much, but I had action figures: a Planet of the Apes treehouse and a couple of the Planet of the Apes guys, one human and one ape. I also had a wolfman and a glow-in-the-dark vampire.

As I grew up, I still loved the genre. I am a big-time Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan (ah, Spike!). And Supernatural (ah, Dean!). My first novel with Dreamspinner Press, Good Bones, was about a werewolf, and I’ve written a sequel that will be released soon. And Night Shift also has a paranormal element.

In the paranormal books and movies and TV shows I love, nobody is all that surprised about the various supernatural creatures. For example, when Dylan’s boyfriend Chris finds out at long last that Dylan goes furry once a month, Chris is pissed off that Dylan’s kept the secret from him. But nobody particularly questions that werewolves exist. The reaction generally tends to be mild surprise, like discovering your neighbor is a Scientologist.

This brings me to Aiden Finn. As you read Night Shift—and I do hope you read it!—you’ll fairly quickly have some hunches about the true identity of Aiden’s new friend, Luka. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. But even though Aiden’s not an idiot, the truth doesn’t dawn on him until it’s almost literally biting him in the face. Because really, in actual, true life, would it occur to any of us that our new lover might be a supernatural creature? Of course not! Creatures like that are totally fictional.

That’s the joke I played on Aiden. Here he is, thinking he’s living in real life, when he’s only a hapless character in a paranormal romance.

At least as a character in a romance story, Aiden’s almost guaranteed a happy ending, so maybe he’ll forgive me.

You can preorder Night Shift now atDreamspinner Press. It releases at midnight EDT on April 3.