Dorianna
by Catherine
Stine
Genre: YA
paranormal/horror
Publisher:
Evernight Teen
Date of
Publication: October 24, 2014
Word Count: 91K
Cover Artist:
Sour Cherry Designs
Book
Description:
Internet
followers, beauty, power. It all sounded good.
Until it
transformed into a terrifying reality Dorianna couldn’t stop.
Dorianna is a
dark twist for the Internet generation on A Picture of Dorian Gray.
When her father
is jailed, her mother ships lonely, plain Dorianna to her aunt’s. There,
Dorianna yearns to build a new identity, but the popular Lacey bullies
her—mostly for getting attention from her ex, Ander.
Ander takes
Dorianna to Coney Island where Wilson, a videographer, creates a stunning
compilation of her. She dreams of being an online sensation, as she’s never
even had a birthday party, and vows she’d give anything to go viral. Wilson
claims he’s the Prince of Darkness and warns her the pledge has downsides.
Dorianna thinks
he’s joking. She has no idea of how dire the consequences might be.
About the Author
Catherine Stine’s novels span the range from science fiction to paranormal to contemporary. Her futuristic thriller, Fireseed One won finalist spots in YA and Sci-Fi in the 2013 USA News International Book Awards and an Indie Reader Approved notable seal. Its companion novel, Ruby’s Fire was a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her paranormal YA, Dorianna launches with Evernight Teen in October. She also writes new adult fiction as Kitsy Clare. Her new adult Art of Love series includes Model Position and Private Internship. She loves all things spooky, exotic and edgy, including travel to unusual locations. She also loves hearing from readers.
Buy Links:
GUEST POST
The Strange Pleasures of
Obsessive Dread
Victorian and Contemporary Horror
By Catherine Stine
Edgar
Allen Poe, Mary Shelley and Christina Rossetti—these were some of the greatest
Victorian masters of horror. They wrote during a time of extreme suppression of
the passions. Ironically, this repressive mood inspired a huge outpouring of
dark, gritty, evocative literature. Passions manage to burst out of people no
matter how buried!
In
1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein,
the quintessential misunderstood antihero. He was hideous and committed
murderous acts, yet he had a human, breakable heart and sadly, understood how
hideous he was. Shelley is credited with being the very first science-fiction
author. Quite impressive for the time period when women were trussed in girdles
and long, cumbersome skirts, and rarely had jobs much less illustrious careers.
Edgar
Allen Poe is another master of mounting dread, with his ticking clocks, ghastly
secrets, and moldering corpses in walled up sections of cellars. In his short
stories The House of Usher and The Black Cat Poe wrote of an alcoholic’s
nightmarish visions that might make even sane men murder cats and move crusty
houses to snap to life.
Christina
Rossetti’s brilliant poem The Goblin Market is my favorite dark Victorian gem.
At first the plump little goblins selling fruits seem spunky and cute, but
later, when the young women turn down their offers of treats, they become quite
nasty. Many determine that the goblins’ aggressive behavior was a Victorian caution
to women against considering sex with strange men! Here are some lines. See
what you think:
No longer wagging, purring, but
visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling. One call’d
her proud,
Cross-grain’d, uncivil; their
tones wax’d loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails, they trod
and hustled her,
Elbow’d and jostled her, claw’d
with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing,
mocking,
Tore her gown and soil’d her
stocking,
Twitch’d her hair out by the
roots,
Stamp’d upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeez’d their
fruits
Against her mouth to make her
eat.
So,
in Victorian times, people shared a dread of lurid, passionate sex,
alcoholic-fueled visions, and creeping lunacy. In my young adult horror, Dorianna, I examine a very contemporary anxiety
that emerged from social media: the dread of never having enough followers,
enough Likes on Facebook, enough people Friending and following your Instagrams
and Pinterest boards. It is also the hollow feeling that comes with sensing that
the real problem lies way underneath—a psychological horror of alienation,
loneliness, being left out of the party. With Dorianna, the problem also lies
in what happens when she actually gets followers—a
ton of them—but those rampaging followers
have a very different agenda than she ever imagined. Here’s a snippet from Dorianna where she’s talking about her
next party, organized online:
I
spoon in a hunk of chocolate and let it slide luxuriously down my throat.
Lately, I’m so famished. For food, for clothes, for fans. Nothing ever seems to
fill me up.
“Can’t
wait to hear.” Bailey licks whipped cream off her spoon. “How many RSVPs do we
have now?” she asks. The evite went out a week ago.
“This
morning we had three hundred sixty-two yeses.”
“Holy
Moly!” Bailey’s jaw drops. I study the oozy chocolate blobs floating on her
tongue. “How will we cram all those people in my loft?”
“It’s
a good problem, right?”
“Uh,
yeah, if we had a stadium. Seriously, Mom will freak, and she’s normally very
mellow. Where are they all coming from?”
“Mostly
from a friend who goes to a school in Fort Greene.”
“Dorianna,
we need to shut this thing down—take it offline.”
“We
can’t do that.” Five thousand fan page followers and three hundred sixty-two attendees
is not enough. No way. I can’t wait until the third event, where I’m going to
bust it wide open.
As Simon Cowell of
American Idol judge fame said: The ratings come in, you’re happy for five minutes, then
the insecure madness comes.
What
modern obession or dread do you think would make a good theme for a horror
novel?
Catherine Stine’s novels span the range from science fiction to paranormal to contemporary. Her futuristic thriller, Fireseed One won finalist spots in YA and Sci-Fi in the 2013 USA News International Book Awards and an Indie Reader Approved notable seal. Its companion novel, Ruby’s Fire was a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her paranormal YA, Dorianna launches with Evernight Teen in October. She also writes new adult fiction as Kitsy Clare. Her new adult Art of Love series includes Model Position and Private Internship. She loves all things spooky, exotic and edgy, including travel to unusual locations. She also loves hearing from readers.
Author Links:
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