Thanks so much to Carrie for hosting the Stitch Blog Tour today! I’m so excited to be here and to share a little about why I chose to write Stitch – my very first book – in the paranormal romance genre.There are literally HUNDREDS of book genres to choose from, but when I started coming up with ideas for Stitch, there were only two that I knew right away Stitch might fall into: paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi. (And in fact, I wasn’t able to choose just one, so it’s actually a little bit of both!)

Paranormal romance has been HUGE lately, particularly in the young adult market though it definitely appeals to readers of all ages (I was 25 when I read the Twilight series and literally entered a two-week depression after I finished it!!). So what is it about paranormal romance that appeals so strongly to me and to all these other enthusiastic readers?

For me, at least, the appeal of paranormal romance comes down to two things, and sure enough, those two things are right in the name: paranormal and romance.

1. The Paranormal. I’m a para-geek. There’s no denying it. Anything that has to do with anything paranormal just hooks my interest. As a kid, I played with Ouija boards and voodoo dolls, watched any scary movie I could get my hands on (October on the SyFy channel = AWESOME), even ran a lemonade stand in the local graveyard! Tim Burton was (and continues to be) my favorite director (Beetlejuice, anyone?), and whenever there’s nothing on TV, I always seem to find myself watching reruns of one of those terrible ghost hunting shows. I know this is weird, but I just can’t help myself.

And as much as I love a good vampire/werewolf story, ghosts are a particular obsession of mine. I’ve never had a ghost encounter myself (which I have very mixed feelings about – part of me is dying to have one, but part of me is scared to death!), but I’ve certainly heard PLENTY of stories from people who have. And they’re just fascinating. Maybe it’s because I’m both a spiritual person who likes to believe that there is something after death and an engineer who needs a little science to balance things out. Ghosts, after all, are the closest we’ve been able to come to proving there’s an afterlife. So even though real ghost stories are ridiculously scary, I also feel like they’re kind of hopeful; they remind us that there’s more to life than what we think we know.

2. The Romance. In addition to being a freak about anything paranormal, I’m also a hugely hopeless romantic. I will pretty much read or watch ANYTHING as long as it has a sprinkling of romance on top, and I will gladly argue that a little romance will make any story better (I even thought it was romantic when Anakin Skywalker went on a killing spree after finding out his beloved Padme was dead – okay, I have issues!). And I love all kinds of love stories – forbidden love, passionate love, love/hate relationships, even the dreaded “InstaLove.” I’ll buy it all. Hey – love happens.

And if you ask me, combining love with anything paranormal just heightens the experience. First off, there’s the sheer chemical reaction – if your system is all hyped up on adrenaline from being scared, of course you’re going to experience any other emotion more intensely, including love. And then there are all these other exciting elements that are necessitated by the presence of anything paranormal – danger, secrets, sacrifices – it’s a roller coaster! And of course there’s the allure of “fixing” someone – or something – that’s fundamentally broken. (What’s sexier than a natural-born killer of humans pushing his lethal instincts aside in the face of love? See: Edward Cullen, Angel, Damon & Stefan Salvatore, etc. That’s what I call devotion!)

So in the end, paranormal romance just made sense for me. Paranormal romance is the perfect setting for love that’s exciting and intense and deep. I wanted Alessa (the protagonist of Stitch) to know a love that spanned across time, across space, across life and death itself. And what better way to feel that than to fall in love with a ghost?

 

Samantha Durante lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, Sudeep, and her cat, Gio. Formerly an engineer at Microsoft, Samantha left the world of software in 2010 to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and a lifelong love of writing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, Samantha is currently working full time for her company Medley Media Associates as a freelance business writer and communications consultant. Stitch is her first novel.