Forever is Sexy

Here's another one I really wanted to repost, mostly because I love anything paranormal...and okay, I have a major weakness for pretty men!

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For curiosity's sake, I decided to take a quick gander as to WHY the paranormal market is so booming. From young adult to adult. Dystopian to romance. Paranormal characters are taking the literary world by storm and have been for quite a while.  

But why?

I think the answer is pretty simple. Because the larger majority of readers are female. And though we all have different tastes there are some common themes most of us have a hard time denying.

1) We're greedy with the idea of romance. We want to be loved like we're the most important thing in his world. To win a man's heart & devotion for one lifetime is a wonderful thing, but to win it for eternity . . . PRICELESS! (Where is Mastercard with a commercial when I need one?)

Legolas - Lord of the Rings

2)  We love men with depth! The more delicious layers we can peel from a man to get to the center of who he truly is, the more we fall in love with him along the way. We melt over the notion of all the late night, post-coital, secret-sharing talks it'll take to begin skimming the surface of the man who's been through so much. 

Louis - Interview with the Vampire

3)  We're more superficial than we'd like to admit. Yes, we want a man who stirs our heart first and foremost, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't also appreciate it if he had a face & body we could stare at for hours! Immortal men provide the best of both worlds: They possess the wisdom of age & the beauty of youth.

Damon Salvatore - The Vampire Diaries

I think this is just the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to tapping into why, as a reading community, we just can't seem to get enough of the sexy creatures of the paranormal variety.

Any personal faves?

March Book Club Selection -- You Choose!

First of all: Huge thank you to everyone who participated last month. I'm still working out the kinks of running an online book club, and I thank those of you who were willing to join in on the maiden voyage. You RAWK!!

Moving on to this month . . . so, I don't know if I've had a stroke of brilliance or if it's just my brain's way of shirking responsibility for picking the book everyone has to read, but I've decided to loosen up our book club a little.

I still want to alternate between YA and Adult geared novels, just to give everyone a chance to participate & try new things. However, instead of selecting one book, I'll offer up three choices each month.

Choose whichever one best fits your fancy. Then on Friday, April 1st (no fools up in my blog, Yo!) we'll post our discussion thread.

What do you think? Okay, even if you think it's a bad idea . . . tough. These are the rules we're playing by for this go around at least!

So here are this month's choices:

A Brush of Darkness : Allison Pang  (Urban Fantasy)

The man of her dreams might be the cause of her nightmares.

Six months ago, Abby Sinclair was struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Now, she has an enchanted iPod, a miniature unicorn living in her underwear drawer, and a magical marketplace to manage. But despite her growing knowledge of the OtherWorld, Abby isn’t at all prepared for Brystion, the dark, mysterious, and sexy-as- sin incubus searching for his sister, convinced Abby has the key to the succubus’s whereabouts. Abby has enough problems without having this seductive shape-shifter literally invade her dreams to get information. But when her Faery boss and some of her friends vanish, as well, Abby and Brystion must form an uneasy alliance. As she is sucked deeper and deeper into this perilous world of faeries, angels, and daemons, Abby realizes her life is in as much danger as her heart—and there’s no one she can trust to save her.

Succubus Blues : Richelle Mead  (Paranormal Romance)

When it comes to jobs in hell, being a succubus seems pretty glamorous. A girl can be anything she wants, the wardrobe is killer, and mortal men will do anything just for a touch. Granted, they often pay with their souls, but why get technical?

But Seattle succubus Georgina Kincaid's life is far less exotic. At least there's her day job at a local bookstore—free books; all the white chocolate mochas she can drink; and easy access to bestselling, sexy writer, Seth Mortensen, aka He Whom She Would Give Anything to Touch but Can't.

But dreaming about Seth will have to wait. Something wicked is at work in Seattle's demon underground. And for once, all of her hot charms and drop-dead one-liners won't help because Georgina's about to discover there are some creatures out there that both heaven and hell want to deny...

I Am Number 4 :  Pittacus Lore  (Sci-Fi)

Nine of us came here. We look like you. We talk like you. We live among you. But we are not you. We can do things you dream of doing. We have powers you dream of having. We are stronger and faster than anything you have ever seen. We are the superheroes you worship in movies and comic books—but we are real.

Our plan was to grow, and train, and become strong, and become one, and fight them. But they found us and started hunting us first. Now all of us are running. Spending our lives in shadows, in places where no one would look, blending in. we have lived among you without you knowing.

But they know.

They caught Number One in Malaysia.
Number Two in England.
And Number Three in Kenya.
They killed them all.

I am Number Four.

I am next.

Hopefully there is something here for everyone. Hey, if you want to read more than one of them, knock yourself out.

Click here to find the links to order online. 

I So Did Not Mean To Write That

Believe it or not, sometimes, the last person to know what kind of story you wrote is . . . YOU.

Growing up, my introduction to romance novels came via a mother who was obsessed with the historicals. You know, the kind with some half-naked version of Fabio on the cover.

Like this....

or this ....

(I actually remember both of these books ... and I'm way too excited about that fact. Moving on.)

If I'm being quite frank. I did very little reading for the storylines back in those days. Most of them were relatively stock (and cheesy).

For a 13-15 year old girl -- coming of age in a pre-internet world -- those books were the closest my curious brain could get to actual porn.

The world of romance novels has drastically changed in the time since then (which, for the sake of my ego we'll pretend was only a decade ago. K? Thanks).

Yet, while the books changed, my perception of them didn't.

I'd moved on to the horror/fantasy concoctions of Stephen King and Anne Rice. Left behind were the heaving bossoms and throbbing shafts of romance novels gone by.

Forward to the day when I proudly sent my fledgling manuscript off to my betas.

"Here," I said, "read my fantasy novel."

The feedback was both exhilarating and disturbing. Most loved it to pieces, but they kept calling it a romance.

"What? Um, I don't write romance," I said.

"Yes, you do," they said.

"No, there's witches and immortal beings and reincarnation, oh my," I said.


"Yeah, but it's all about the lurve," they said.  (Yes, they said lurve)


Anyway, this exchange went back and forth for a while, until I finally realized what they already knew.

I had written a romance. Paranormal romance, mind you, but a romance nonetheless.

The genre has branched off into so many different avenues that weren't there twenty ten years ago. Paranormal, suspense, erotica, contemporary, etc. And I found myself writing it, without even realizing that was what I was doing. (Turns out I'm pretty durn good at it, if I do say so myself)

This happen to anyone else? Not necessarily romance, per se. Maybe you meant to write a mystery and wound up with a thriller. Maybe your paranormal went all sci-fi. If so, don't fret. It doesn't matter how you get there . . . I think we all find our landing spots sooner or later.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

Genre Roulette

Just when I thought I could take a deep sigh of relief that (thanks to even more research & great advice) the query letter has become less confusing to me, I run into another issue - what the heck is my genre?

I seriously thought I had it all figured out - otherwise I would never have sent out four queries already - but then (as if they plan it this way on purpose) several of the agent blogs I follow starting talking about how to properly classify your genre. This is where my trouble began.

As with a lot of current fiction, there is a blending of genre's that happens quite often. For example : urban fantasy was created, because so many fantasy writers decided they liked putting their creatures in the "real world". Erotica came along, because there were readers who wanted more of the gritty stuff and less of the will they - won't they of traditional romance, etc.

The problem for new writers (those of us still trying to land their first agent & publish their first novels), agents want you to be real clear on what genre you see your book fitting into. Many specialize in a couple particular ones and want to make sure they aren't wasting their time reading your work if it isn't what they represent - which is understandable. Only, what are you supposed to do if you aren't one hundred percent sure anymore?

This whole time, I thought I was pretty safe in labeling my story as a paranormal romance.

Yes, part of it does take place in Tudor England, but it's more about seeing how much time has passed since the characters were mortal (not vampires by the way, in case you were wondering), so there isn't enough focus on the time period to make it historical. There are some tense moments where everything the main character cherishes is on the line, but not hardly enough to label it as suspense. And while parts of the story do take place in a modern day setting, there really isn't enough to label it urban fantasy.

But here's what it does have. Two characters who start out human and become immortal, they are madly in love with one another, and outside factors keep trying to rip them apart from one another. So I thought ... paranormal romance it is. Except, just last night, I read that in order to be considered romance it must end with a "Happily Ever After" sort of closing.

Son of a *****! My story ends with the possibility for happiness, but there is also the chance for uncertainty. So now I don't really know what to do. I guess I could always change the end of the story and make it more "happily ever after", but that would make me feel kind of cheap (not terribly, only 'kind of') . . . but if I don't change it, then what would I call it?

Anyone run into this problem themselves or have any suggestions on what I should call it? (I thought about cheating and still calling it paranormal romance, but I'd hate to be rejected by an agent when they got to the end of the synopsis and didn't see the "Happily Ever After")