Christine Feehan's Blog - Posts Tagged "20-year-anniversary"

20 Year Anniversary of Dark Prince

Twenty years ago the top song in the US was Christina Aguilera’s Genie In A Bottle and in the UK it was Westlife’s If I Let You Go. The Sixth Sense came out as did The Boondock Saints, both of which became cult classics. But, what I was most excited about back then was the release of my first novel – Dark Prince.
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I admit that I’m a little shocked that 20 years has gone by already. I’d written for years, but I did it for myself. My friend Kathie encouraged me to submit my manuscript and I finally agreed, but didn’t really think much of it. Well, not until I got a phone call from Dorchester Publishing making an offer on it. Being excited and surprised I promptly hung up on them. Yes. I hung up on them. I really was surprised. Luckily, they called back and I gathered the courage to say “yes” to their offer.
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When Dorchester cut 100 pages of the manuscript I was sad, but I realized that this is a business and I dealt with that decision. They also wanted me to include technology, which wasn’t something I really wanted to do since it dates the book, but I added it in. I’m asked about timelines and ages all the time and I never give absolute answers and some of that stems from the way Dark Prince was edited and changed back then.

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(From the way back machine: my website from 1999)
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When Dorchester went out of business Avon bought the rights to those earlier books, which included Dark Prince. They were excited to have me add in those 100 pages that had previously been cut. That was in 2011. But, when I cut those and made the changes Dorchester requested it caused some difficulty adding it back in. It wasn’t just a matter of adding pages that were previously cut. It had to be added in a way that flowed well and didn’t disrupt the continuity. But, I made it happen! Now you can get what they call a special “Author’s Cut”.
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I’m thrilled and humbled that Dark Prince continues to be popular even today. I love it when I get a letter or email from someone saying they just read Dark Prince for the first time and then I chuckle when they ask if I have any more in the series. I do. There are currently a total of 32 books out in the series and as of Sept. 3rd Dark Illusion will be number 33.