Guest Post: Hope Irving

I am a debut indie New Adult paranormal romance author. As I started to write, I realized that I love bringing out to life characters whose story I’d love to read about. I find it a major perk as a writer.

I lived in Paris, France, most of my life (that’s where I currently live with my family) and also in the US, where I graduated with an MBA. I guess I forgot to mention that I am French but I chose to write my series, the Black Angel Book, in English.

Once completed, it will be a four-book series: Twice Upon A Time (Book 1) was released on Halloween last year, Deadly Ever After (Book 2) release date is June 2nd, Once Upon A Dream (Book 3) and Madly Ever After (Book 4) will be out soon in 2016.

It took about a week before I decided against using my mother tongue to write my books. I found several reasons as to why.

Rose, the female lead character is French-American. Her mother is French and her (deceased) father was American, that’s how she spends her summer with her American relatives on the East Coast at the beginning of Book 1. With that story I wanted to pay tribute to my country of birth as well as my country of heart. Writing in English felt right.

Also, I believe that the atmosphere of the whole series would have been different if I had written it in French. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the books couldn’t be translated in French, only that it was easier for me as a writer to use the English language. Despites my mother tongue, it would have been more complicated to express what I had to convey in French.

What convinced me to use English instead of French was the genre of my series. I think it has a broader audience amongst English readers. There are some New Adult books written by French authors, the same goes for paranormal or even romance but all those genres are not as popular, let alone combined. It is especially true with indie authors.

And there’s another twisted reason. I wanted to be free in my writing. Most of my friends and family don’t speak English, or at least don’t read in English. I value their opinion, of course, but writing without wondering what they would think about the series was truly liberating.

Finally, I’m following one of Stephen King’s advice to the letter: read a lot. That’s an awesome excuse to one-click every English NA/paranormal/romance novels possible. Thanks, Stephen.

Happy reading!