The Short Story
- Rachel Dunning is a pseudonym- I'll be nuking this mailing list after this post.
- If you want to follow my new work ("Sexy Horror / Sexy Dark Fantasy / Sexy Paranormal Fantasy") you need to sign up for my new mailing list. Here's the link: http://authorpaulo.com/newreleases
- Please read the long story
The Long Story
If you're wondering why you haven't seen any new books from me (except for a short novella) in a few years, it's because I've been writing under another name.I've thought long and hard about this for many years, whether I should announce to folks the nature of my "true" identity.
The truth is, guys get a bad rap when they write romance, especially steamy romance. And by guys I mean males, I mean dudes, I mean people like me.
I love romance, I have always loved romance. I grew up watching soap operas with my much older sister, and my mom. Loving was the all-time favorite, although Days of Our Lives was a close second. (Ah, Hope, Bo Brady, Steve Johnson, my old friends. I think I was six or seven years old.) I'm a RomCom addict and my wife and I struggle to find RomComs to watch because we have, literally, seen them all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, say what you will about not caring if a Romance Writer is a dude. Even I roll my eyes when I see that a romance book was written by a guy. And if I see that it's a New Adult Romance, I don't even bother downloading a sample.
Yes, I personally tend to not read romance books written by men...so how the heck could I expect people to read my own stuff if I wrote under my real name?
And so the pseudonym Rachel Dunning was born, and I published my first book in the New Adult Romance genre, Finding North. Many of you are on this list because of that very book.
That was in August, 2013.
Honestly, I'm utterly terrified of what people's reactions will be to this post. And the only reason I'm even doing this is because I've written a lot of freaking books under this name, and there were people who liked those books and, darn it, we have a second baby on the way and I sure as heck don't want to lose all the fans I garnered throughout the years of work I put into this pseudonym simply because I was too scared to say, "Folks, I'm a dude, and I write New Adult Romance, but I also write Horror, and I also write Young Adult, and I also write a bunch of other stuff, and I'm just so tired of managing fifty gazillion profiles so, here we go, this is where you can find me from now on!"
To make matters "worse," I got the most incredibly touching email from a fan about ten days ago because she had read one of my series and stayed up all night to finish it, and told me how much she loved it.
The mail made me sad, It really did. Because I was just going to drop this name and forget all about it. Writing under the Rachel Dunning name has been an emotional roller-coaster for me and my family. I eventually gave it up entirely.
I didn't feel I was very good at this genre. I still don't feel that.
And then...well...someone sends me a mail like that, and, well, I start thinking...
Some of you have enjoyed what I wrote, some of you went the extra mile and actually emailed me personally about it. I am so unbelievably grateful for all those mails. It's hard to convey this without gushing excessively. But ask any writer: one mail saying, "Hey, good job, I enjoyed it," goes a long way to keep a person writing.
Only six or seven people knew the true identity behind Rachel Dunning for many years. My wife was one of them. I thank her so deeply for her support. She is my Number One Fan, and I would never, ever have been able to write for as long as I have without her support. There are not enough words in the English language to explain how much she has been by my side during the roller-coaster years of trying to tame this beast called a "Writing Career."
So, here's the long and short of it: I now maintain one mailing list, and I likely will not be writing your typical New Adult Romances anymore. I write horror--sexy horror, to be more precise. And the next series I'm writing will be a "Sexy Fantasy" filled with humor and, yes, some romance, but it isn't really New Adult...nor is it Paranormal Romance...nor is it comedy...but I think a lot of you are going to enjoy it. I really do.
(If we must give this new series a genre, it would be something like "Humorous Sexy Paranormal Romance," but not even that's entirely correct. Wow, I hate genres.)
If you're into horror, or sexy tales that don't follow the usual plot arc of New Adult, maybe some of my current stuff will interest you. (I personally love reading two genres above all others: Horror, and Romance. I kid you not.)
So, there it is, I'm out of the closet, and now there's no going back in.
I am terrified. I am not just saying this. I have kept on writing all these years despite the ups and downs, in a large part, out of a hope to make a living out of it for me and my family. I have done better than a lot of writers, but certainly not as well as the best ones.
But I don't want to lose touch with those of you who enjoyed what I wrote, and who might continue to enjoy what I'm writing in a different genre, and under a different name.
If my new stuff is not for you, no sweat. I thank you for being a subscriber to this list for so long.
The New Mailing List / The New Name
So, here it is, my new mailing list, under the name Paulo da Silva:http://authorpaulo.com/newreleases
You can find some of my most recent books on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/author/paulodasilva
If you're looking for a place to start, I recommend my latest series, "Lurid Tales of Weird Horror," and you can find the first book here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081FC3S6Z (This is not the funny, sexy fantasy I was telling you about--that's coming up in a month or two...or three.)
And I'll be nuking Rachel Dunning's mailing list straight after this mail lands in your mailboxes. But you can still reply to this mail if you want to. I'd love to hear from you.
All my love,
Rachel / Paulo / Writer of Many Names
