Katie Rose Pryal

ABOUT THE BOOK

Spicy paranormal romance meets dark academia in The World of the Demonkin, a new trilogy from neurodivergent storyteller Katie Rose Pryal. 

In the series starter Demon’s Blood, we learn that some bloodlines should remain buried. But Naomi Larkin’s are rising. Naomi has one rule: don’t get attached. Not to any friend at elite St. Julian’s College, not to any guy, not to anyone at all who might leave her. It’s a rule that’s kept her safe—until now. Then she crosses the campus gates for her senior year, and her body catches fire from the inside out, a new power exploding within her.

What she finds on the other side isn’t a nervous breakdown. It’s a war: a murdered ghost named Margaret, sent to guide her. A century-old bargain between the school’s twelve founding families and a creature that isn’t human. And a power growing inside Naomi that she never asked for and definitely can’t control.

She’s not supposed to need anyone. But her magic pulls her inexorably toward two very different guys: a lacrosse star running from his own wounds, and a boy who can’t lie even when the truth might cost him everything. Both of them are pawns in the same fight as Naomi. Both are falling for her, and she for them. She’s terrified, because suddenly she has far too much to lose.

She’s willing to sacrifice anything to protect them. No matter the cost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Rose Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., tells stories both real and imagined about the outsiders, the misfits, and the beautifully complicated. She is a bipolar-AuDHD writer, author, keynote speaker, educator, and expert in mental health and neurodiversity.

An IPPY Gold Medal-winning author in romance, her fiction includes The Hollywood Lights contemporary romance series of novels and novellas, including Entanglement, Love and Entropy, Chasing Chaos, How to Stay, Fallout Girl, and Take Your Charming Somewhere Else. 

Her many award-winning nonfiction books on neurodiversity and mental health include the Foreword 2025 INDIES Finalist Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider’s Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children. Katie’s work has been featured in Catapult, NPR, and many other outlets, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay writing. 

Her forthcoming books include the memoir An Autistic Girl’s Guide to Horses and Neurodivergent & Expecting: An Insider’s Guide to Planning, Pregnancy, and Postpartum, as well as Demon’s Sword and Demon’s Queen, Books II and III in The World of the Demonkin.

Katie lives in North Carolina with her husband, children, and many rescue pets. When she’s not writing, she teaches creative writing in the Drexel MFA Program. In her free time, she’s an avid equestrian who competes in dressage and showjumping. Find her on Substack at The Misfit Manifesto. 

SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. You describe your fiction writing as “angsty contemporary and paranormal romance with a neurodivergent twist.” Can you explain the angst and that special twist? 
2. You write a LOT. How does your process differ when you’re writing nonfiction, memoir, a personal essay for a literary magazine or your Substack, or genre fiction? 
3. Given your award-winning credentials in nonfiction and memoir, what draws you to genre fiction, a form often unfairly dismissed as less serious literature?
4. How does being Bipolar-AuDHD inform your writing, both the subject matter and the process?
5. What is “dark academia” as a fiction genre? What are some books we might have heard of that are dark academia? 
6. Why was an academic setting important for this novel?
7. What does the paranormal aspect do for the story arc of the book? What paranormal romance novels inspired this new trilogy?
8. Your protagonist has complex post-traumatic stress disorder. How does that choice inform the story?