Kiss of Darkness: An Interview With Taylor Aston White
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Paranormal romance is one of the genres we, as readers, can’t get enough of. Filled with supernatural danger, complicated characters, and a romance unfolding in the middle of it all. And if you love paranormal romance, Kiss of Darkness by Taylor Aston White may already be on your radar. The book is the first in the Curse of the Guardians series and a spin-off of Taylor Aston White’s Alice Skye series — but you don’t need to read that to read this — a world filled with demons, magic, and the people caught between them.
I recently had the opportunity to ask Taylor Aston White about Kiss of Darkness and the world behind the book. Everything from the inspiration behind the story and its characters to her approach to writing paranormal romance, Taylor takes us behind the scenes of Kiss of Darkness and shares more about what went into creating the series.
Interview with Taylor Aston White
1. Kiss of Darkness brings together druids, Witches, Fae, and other supernatural elements within a modern London setting.
What drew you to combining those magical traditions, and how did you imagine them fitting together within the larger world of the series?
Too much anxiety and not enough sleep 👍🏼 😉
I actually grew up with my mum telling me stories of faeries at the bottom of the garden, and other mythologies from around the UK and Ireland. So as I got older, I explored them in more detail and naturally combined them to create a world more magical than our reality.
When I first created the lore/world, I never really planned for it to grow in the way it did. It actually started with my first series, Alice Skye, which somehow became six books, and then a spin-off series, which starts with Kiss of Darkness.
2. There seems to be a much larger supernatural history existing beneath what we see directly on the page.
How much of that history and mythology did you develop behind the scenes, and are there pieces of the world in further books that you know as an author that readers haven’t encountered yet?
The history was first developed through the series Alice Skye; however, you don’t need to read that series to understand the world. I tried to weave the history organically through the story without info dumping, and I purposely chose familiar/recognizable things that I just adapted a little to better fit the world I’d created.
There’s so much more to this world that you find out through the rest of the books, but I don’t want to give too much away. 👀 I definitely have plans in the future to expand the lore already created, removing London and those familiar surroundings and exploring the Fae in their own realm as more of a Romantasy rather than Urban Fantasy/PNR.
3. Power (and who gets to wield it over whom) plays a significant role throughout the story.
What interested you about exploring those kinds of power imbalances, particularly through Kyra’s relationships with people like Bane and Frederick? And more generally, those around her?
The world right now is a power imbalance. It made sense for me to reflect that in a fictional world where I had more control over the story.
I wanted to create conflict and anger. A David and Goliath where you’re going to root for the little man (in this case, Kyra). I wanted to show someone like her, who has a traumatic past and is surrounded by things outside her control, that she can still regain autonomy.
That’s reflected in her strength when dealing with characters such as Bane and Frederick.
4. Lucifer “Lucy” is such a memorable presence despite not being a central character. Does he eventually get his own book?
What was the inspiration behind him, and did you always intend for him to have such a distinct personality within the story?
He does! He finishes the Curse of the Guardians series with book 7, Dance of Wings. I can’t tell you the inspiration for him exactly, because he came from the Alice Skye series and easily slipped within the Guardians as a good contrast to the characters.
He was the physical representation of everything they’ve been taught to hate, but in reality Lucifer wasn’t anything like they’d been told. I try to make each character have a distinct personality, so they’re not carbon copies of each other.
I think because he’s the most unhinged (and he only gets worse as the series goes), he’s just more lovable. He still seems to be the fan favorite character of the series, and if you love him, you’ll love Ruhne from book 6, Burn of Obsidian. 😉
5. The story takes its time revealing its larger conflicts and allowing the different pieces of the supernatural world to come together.
Was that slower unfolding something you deliberately wanted for Kiss of Darkness, and what do you want readers to experience during that build?
I find I can’t help but write a slow burn! I wanted the readers to experience the same wait and anticipation as the characters, who also don’t know what’s going to happen rather than just info dumping.
6. When you’re writing morally complicated or deliberately difficult characters, where is the line for you between creating someone the reader is supposed to dislike and creating someone you still want them to remain emotionally invested in?
I don’t have a line 😂 I actually enjoy writing these characters because I try to make them three-dimensional, so there’s reasoning behind them being morally complicated or deliberately difficult. I’ve found that readers make up their own minds, whether they’re emotionally invested anyway. I’ve written characters that I wanted people to hate, and still get people asking me to redeem them because they loved how complicated their character was!
7. Urban fantasy gives you the interesting challenge of placing magic inside a world readers already recognize.
When you were creating this version of London, what existed first in your imagination: the real city with all the supernatural elements hidden inside or the supernatural world with London built around it?
The real city. I grew up, and still live, just 40 minutes from London. I’m familiar with the atmosphere and feel of the city. So it easily became the base of my world, which I then adapted to include more magical elements.
8. Now that readers have entered this world through Kiss of Darkness, what is something about the world, its characters, or its mythology that you hope they’ll understand differently by the time they leave it?
That not everything is as it seems. That while you’re taught certain Breeds, such as Daemons, are evil because of their choices, in reality it’s far more complicated. Trust the process, and enjoy the Guardians 😉
A HUGE thank you to Taylor Aston White for taking the time out of her day to answer my questions and share more about the world behind Kiss of Darkness. It was wonderful to get a little more insight into the inspiration behind the story, its characters, and the larger world connecting Curse of the Guardians to the Alice Skye series.
If you’re curious about my own experience with Kiss of Darkness, I’ll be sharing my full review later this week. We’ll get into what worked for me, what didn’t, and my overall thoughts on the paranormal romance Taylor Aston White created.
About Taylor Aston White
If Kiss of Darkness is your introduction to Taylor, there are plenty more worlds awaiting. Taylor is a dark fantasy and romance writer where tension takes center stage, secrets unravel, and—no matter how dark things get between the pages—love conquers all.
When Taylor is not writing, she draws inspiration from mythology and European faerie tales, weaving pieces of them into her own modern worlds and delectable stories. Taylor lives in the UK with her childhood sweetheart and their two children.
Check out Taylor’s website and find more of the delectably dark books she writes.
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