When I published the first Running in Fear title in 2009, I was a little surprised at how popular it was, even among all the bad reviews. Why did women love it so much (and why did others hate it so passionately)?
The Running in Fear series features an intergalactic crisis to save humans as told through the adventures of a variety of different kinds of shifters who are all multiply mated to human women, who it turns out have all survived some kind of abuse, which makes them stronger.
To my knowledge, this is the only romance series that gives that empowerment to abused women. The series does have BDSM elements, which some of the readers felt were awkward in light of the female characters having survived abuse, but the author sees that as finding men who are strong enough to give pleasure in the adrenaline rush of a good spanking and take care of business.
I became aware of Trinity Blacio’s work after a rabid batch of mean girls eviscerated her writing in 2009. I wrote to her and asked her to send me something because after 20 years as both a newspaper and fiction editor, I felt that I could edit anything. It turns out that her publisher had published her writing without any editing, which is just plain wrong. I edited a short story of her’s (just republished today as Searching for the Perfect Mate: Remi’s Story) and was impressed by the sex. It was my first exposure to werewolf ménage (I was so innocent once!).
I then met Trinity at Lori Foster’s annual romance conference in Ohio where I learned that this short story was just the tip of the iceberg in a series about shifters and their multiple partner romances (every human woman has at least two, but more often three, hot male shifters in Trinity’s universe). I was beginning to see the appeal.
The author’s eyes glowed as she talked about her series and I could see that she was in another world when she told me about her books. It reminded me of the time two decades earlier when I had stayed over Anne’s Rice’s house in New Orleans and she had walked through the streets of that city (and the churches) and told me that the Mayfair witches and her vampires had been part of her world from the time she was a kid. I could see that Trinity had the same kind of inter-connected characters and universe. I decided to acquire the entire series, and am so glad I did. Each volume surprised and amazed me.
Looking back (because we were all knee deep in the exciting explosion of female-centered erotic romance on the web then), I didn’t realize how unique the series was to feature abused survivors who overcame their personal histories to find sex positive soul mates (of other species, no less) and become the warrior queens that save us all. Yes, I know it’s fantasy, but how awesome is that story line? It's only with a little hindsight that I can see just how progressive (and creative) this series was.
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