Blog Tour : Giveaway/Interview - The Last Girl by Kitty Thomas

1. Describe your book in five words or less.

Kitty: Dark, disturbing, emotional, thought-provoking (hopefully, LOL)


2. How did the ideas for your books come to you?

Kitty: A lot of them have been dark/twisted fantasies for awhile now... little stories that run through my head.


3. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

Kitty: In The Last Girl I think it’s a sort of “sympathy for the devil” set up. I want readers to understand Christian, that he’s not human and he isn’t sorry about that. But while he is a predator, he does want to love. And he doesn’t want his pets to die. So there is a real internal struggle for him, and though a lot of the book is in Juliette’s head, I hope that comes across.

And the reason it’s in Juliette’s head is because I want readers to be able to put themselves in her spot and STILL have “sympathy for the devil” because that’s more powerful than having that sympathy from a totally detached place.


4. What is the hardest part of writing for you? What's the easiest?

Kitty: The hardest part is actually sitting down and doing it. (fighting through procrastination and fear). The easiest part is when I actually start typing.


5. What's next for you? Are you currently working on or have plans for future projects?

Kitty: I have tons of ideas I want to explore, but I don’t like to talk about books too soon.


6. Why did you choose to write for specific genre?

Kitty: I never intended to write this genre, but I had the idea for my debut novel, Comfort Food, and I just HAD to write it. I didn’t even really intend to publish it. (Or told myself I didn’t.) I just had to get it out. But once I did, I let a friend read it, who is actually a psychologist and not kinky. She thought it was brilliant and that gave me the courage to publish it.

I expected Comfort Food to not be received well and for people to not “get it” because people are SO obsessed with “safe, sane and consensual” even within BDSM fiction (though I don’t technically class my work as “bdsm fiction”). I mean... it’s fiction. Fiction should be a safe space for fantasy.

Rape/kidnap/slave fantasies (which are common female sexual fantasies) shouldn’t have to be diluted with safe words inside the context of an imaginary story. No real people’s rights are being violated. And nobody (least of all, me) is “condoning” the activities of fictional people. Besides that, erotica is generally written BY and FOR women. While there are male readers, they are in the minority, so that should be kept in mind, IMO, by those who think books like mine “send the wrong message”. What message would that be, exactly? And to whom? The female readers who have fantasies exactly like this? Fantasy and real life are different things. Fantasizing about it doesn’t mean you want to DO it.

So I was prepared for heat. But then, with the exception of very isolated cases, it just didn’t come. Instead, people loved it and wrote me these long super personal emails about how much it meant to them and that gave me the courage to keep going and to let out some of the other stories that have been waiting... so... another writing identity (Kitty) was born. LOL


7. What's it like hearing that readers are eagerly awaiting your book's release date?

Kitty: Sort of surreal. I mean I’m certainly not famous, but I have a little bit of a cult following now. And the Kitty fans are pretty intense! And I sit there and I am thinking: “You know I’m just a person, right?”


8. What is one question that you've always wanted to be asked in an interview? How would you answer that question?

Kitty: You know, if you hadn’t asked me that... I would have an answer for you. LOL. My interviewers tend to be pretty astute and ask a lot of the right questions. Every interviewer doesn’t ask every question, but over the course of all the interviews I’ve done, I think most everything has been touched on!


9. What was your road to publications like?

Kitty: Well, early on, I had the idea I would go the traditional route (Not with Kitty because Kitty wasn’t going to exist LOL) because it was what everybody was doing. But then I started to read about self-publishing and it really seemed more my style. I really like to be creatively in charge of my whole project. I get to dictate all my marketing, my cover art concept, my book title (publishers usually control that and my book titles for both of my pen names are important to the books themselves), side materials like book trailers, etc.

It’s just really important to me to be able to produce my own work. I started indie publishing under my other pen name, Zoe Winters. I was SUPER loud (and perhaps even a little bit obnoxious LOL) about my views about the validity of being indie. But I was so loud because people were letting others tell them they weren’t real writers simply based on who financed the project. Which made NO sense to me. Now I’m not so much in the “indie rah rah” scene. I’m more focused on writing and producing my work and cultivating my fan base.

I’ve also come to understand that being indie isn’t for everybody, and I respect that. But I know it’s for me. :) And though it’s stressful sometimes, I love it!


About The Author

Kitty Thomas writes dark literary erotica that explores power. This work is fiction and meant for an adult audience. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior carried out by characters in her stories.

Her work is not “erotic romance”. Often on some level it is about love and/or obsession. Often the couple in some way ends up “together”, but the work should not be expected to follow the conventions of any type of genre romance, erotic or otherwise.

Inspiration for Kitty’s work comes from many sources including Story of O, Nine and a Half Weeks, and the work of Claudia D. Christian.

Check out her website