Over the years I've had a lot of people criticize THUNDER MOUNTAIN. Some just plain dislike it, others think it's far from the best of the series. And of course, a certain number loved it.
A comment the other day got me to thinking about the book again, and why it has received such a varied response. But first a bit of history so you'll understand how it came to be written.
I was asked to do a Conard County book for the Shadows line at Silhouette. The line, some of you may remember, didn't last long, but that's neither here nor there. The point was, they wanted me to tell a supernatural story set in Conard County.
Now at first I thought this would be really cool, and since I already had a contract to do two Shadows books, I dove in with enthusiasm...only to be yanked up short.
Conard County as I had created it was not a place to tell that kind of story. It would have meant bending the reality I had created into shapes I was not sure would work within the parameters as they existed at the time.
I finally decided that I had to move the story to the very fringes of the County, to a place where the rules had not yet been set, and where I could bend the reality without disturbing everything else.
This brought me to Thunder Mountain. Readers turned out to be distressed because continuing characters and their favorite settings played such a small role in this story. Others were disturbed because I had crossed that line: I had written a fantasy, in which a mountain lived.
I felt I took a huge risk with this book, and many were unhappy with it. It suggested to me that I was right, I couldn't play fast and loose with the "reality" I had already built for Conard County.
Yet the book has been very popular elsewhere in the world, leaving me to wonder what circumstances came into play to cause so much distress. Today, for example, fantasy romances are popular. Was the book just before its time? Or was the only real problem that it was attached to Conard County? I may never know.
Thunder Mountain has appeared in other CC books, but as a quieter presence, a mountain on which some wolves live and are mentioned. But the mountain has never again been a major character in the story.
Perhaps my mistake was in trying not to disturb Conard County as it was. Perhaps I should have written the story to take place on Main Street, thus providing ample opportunity for favorite characters to appear. Maybe I should have taken a different kind of risk.
In the end, the risk I took may not have been big enough. I can only guess.
Hugs,
Rachel
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