Kelly Michaels asked Amanda Hocking:

I find it interesting that in most of your books I have read (all of them, except the Watersong series), your protagonist has an uneasy relationship with their parents. Even Bryn, who has nothing against her parents, but shares an uneasiness with her father at work and politically disagrees with her mother. I was wondering if this was intentional or just how you set a more dramatic turn in your stories?

Amanda Hocking It actually has more to do with the age of my protagonists - they're all 17-19. At that age, most teenagers have rocky relationships with their parents, even if they previously had good ones or will have good ones in the future. I think teenagers are exerting their independence, trying to figure out who they are and what they want, and parents can seem domineering and controlling when they try to advise, or distant and uneasy if they try to the kids figure it out themselves.

Also no interpersonal relationship is easy. I don't think any of my characters have smooth relationships with any of the people their close to - they fight with siblings, friends, crushes... It's a natural part of growing up and just being human.

Out of all my series, I do think Bryn has best relationship with her parents. (Possibly with the exception of Remy, who never really discusses her parents since they're dead at the outset of the series). I made the deliberate choice that I wanted Bryn to have two loving parents that don't always agree with her on everything.

That was in part because I wanted to contrast her parents and her childhood with Wendy's from the Trylle, who had much more difficult relationships with both her adoptive parents and her real parents.

But it was also because I knew the Kanin kingdom can be hold and hard, and I wanted to have a softer, loving spot that Bryn could fall back on. Bryn has been an outcast her whole life, but her parents genuinely love each other and love her very much.

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