Stacey Kennedy on Wolves & Weres

The winner of the signed print copy of The Duke & The Pirate Queen, per Random.org, is Crystal Jordan. Congratulations, Crystal! I'll email you to obtain your mailing address.

Now, please welcome my guest, Stacey Kennedy!

#

What do we know about wolves? They live in a social hierarchy which is lead by an Alpha. They mate for life and will defend that mate to their death. They’re loving, yet deathly lethal when the situation calls them to be. Needless to say, it’s not a surprise that readers are taken by such a beautiful animal when portrayed as a werewolf.

When I created my werewolves in An Everlasting Bite, I followed many of the same rules wolves adhere too. Alphas lead over lower ranking wolves. Their hearts are destined to only one mate. They’re territorial and vicious when provoked. But of course, I changed a few rules too. My wolves are immortal and can shift to a human on command. Not that it hurts any, more just a shift in senses when the magic brings on the change.

As I created the characters, Briggs and Rynn, it really gave me a chance to step outside of myself. To imagine what turning into a werewolf would be like. How every sound would be crisper, how paws would feel when dug into the dirt, and how the wind would feel across your fur. The experience was quite a ride. I suppose by feeling so connected to the wolf while I wrote this story it made me want to understand them more. Through research, I discovered just how playful they are with their pack. And it was this character trait that inspired one of my favourite scenes in An Everlasting Bite. Below I’ve included an excerpt that shows you the sweeter side to a werewolf:

Briggs howled loudly to the moon. When he lowered his head, his eyes shone of rightness, protection, and happiness. But more than that, they showed playfulness. He nudged her side with his nose, nodded toward the forest.

She immediately caught his meaning. She jumped to her feet, returned the look of play and pounced forward. As she ran, she glanced back to see Briggs hitting the ground with his paws in anticipation and wagging his tail. She focused in front of her and ran as if her life depended on it.

His howl came loud, but far away. He let her have a head start, but as she rushed through the trees, she could hear him fast approaching.

She lunged faster, continued to run harder. Her paws barely touched the ground as her speed increased. Her ears twitched back and he began to close the distance. Briggs’ wolf was three times the size of her as a wolf. Needless to say, it didn’t take him long to catch up.

She had an advantage, though, her small size made her slightly quicker. She could weave through trees with impeccable speed while he had to go around them. He couldn’t catch her. He ran to her right, but she never looked back. She didn’t have to. His presence was there, and she could feel his playful banter coursing through her. For wolves, she suspected this was about as fun as it came, and she felt silly right along with him.

Suddenly, he moved faster--lengthened his stride.

Oh crap! He was only humoring her that she could out run him. Before she knew it, he was behind her and gave her backside a little nibble. She skidded to a halt and glanced behind her. He rested, head down and rump in the air, tail wagging.

The wolf within her knew exactly what to do. She lunged toward him. He jumped out of the way to rest in the same position and waited for her attack. Even in his wolf form, his eyes were so amused. He enjoyed this and so did she.

He growled, the sound rumbled through the air as he called her forward. She pounced again, but this time she ended up right on her butt as he maneuvered away from her.
Determined, she crouched down in the position he displayed--the declaration of an attack. She lunged forward. This time he let her. When she collided with him, they rolled around within the leaves and dirt, nibbling at each other.

After a final tumble, she jumped away. When she met his gaze, his eyes were smiling. She couldn’t deny how fun this was. As wolves, this was happiness. She’d needed this. Just silly fun. No danger, only them.

***

Thank you, Victoria, for letting me stop by and share my werewolves with you! Now I ask all of you, what side do you like most to the wolf―the sweet side or their ferocious protective nature?


#

Thanks, Stacey!

Janet Mullany - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Janet Mullany!

#

IMMORTAL JANE

He released her hands and stood. “Consider, Jane. You’ll marry some bore of a country gentleman who’ll kill you in childbed and who won’t want a bookish wife anyway. Perhaps you’ll stay a spinster and lose your bloom and die young of some disease they’ll find an easy cure for in a hundred years or so. Or you’ll see your sister die first.”

“Now you’re cruel.”

“No, it is the truth. But let us paint a happier picture for Miss Jane Austen. You write a few books that entertain your family and you win a little fame, perhaps even some money, while you live. And after, what then? Your books languish forgotten on dusty bookshelves and you are but a name on a binding that disappears with decay and time. You think your books offer you a chance at immortality?”

--Jane and the Damned

*

Jane and the Damned isn’t a romance so it doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. It’s a historical urban fantasy with romance elements, part alternative historical with a bit of this, that, and the other, and some “spot the Austen novel” moments. But I think a characteristic of the HEA is that hero and heroine exist in a bubble of passion, which is why vampire romances are so hot (and, oh yeah, the physical perfection and great sex and all that stuff)—the eternal is now. Never mind that she’ll be looking at hip replacements while he is still a gorgeous 28-year-old sex god. Or, they’ll both be forever young and gorgeous vampires, the HEA distilled into eternity, the passage of time halted.

It’s a great fantasy.

But Jane Austen as a vampire? Neither of these endings would work and I had to create a scenario where her immortality would come with her books, even if at the age of 21 (the book is set in 1797) she was not at all sure she would ever be published. But I was following a trend, even though I hadn’t read a lot of vampire books, and I certainly hadn’t read any of the vampire classics, but I had watched hours of True Blood on HBO before getting tired of all those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood.

All those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood are what I define as Vampires Type A in popular culture. Vampires Type O are the evil ones. The ones mortals must fight to save the world, yadda yadda. And then there’s all this stuff about garlic and holy water and crosses (anyone remember that Roman Polanski movie with the Jewish vampire?—“Oy, lady, did you ever get the wrong vampire…”), not being able to cross running water, go out in daylight, use public transport (I’m making that up), and so on.

I had to come up with a vampire scenario that fit into my depiction of Georgian England, the age of reason and of both social and industrial revolution; the world that produced Jane Austen. I chose very selectively from vampire lore, although essentially the Damned are Type A—hot, desirable, and very fashionable. They’re the ton. Everyone wants to have sex with them or provide them with a dining experience. (These vampires do not feed—that is so vulgar. They dine.) The Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent) loves to hang out with them and the newspapers are full of their scandalous behavior.

To tie the vampire elements to what we know of Austen’s life, I used another established literary trope, that Austen became what she was because of some lifechanging event: frequently a passionate love affair, a secret destroyed in the letters her sister Cassandra burned after her death. The family secret as I interpreted it was that Jane Austen was once a vampire and it influenced everything she wrote.

Do you agree with my vampire-HEA assessment? And what do you think of the current Austen-paranormal trend?

#

Thanks, Janet! It was great to have you visit!

Roll Your Own - Anna Katherine Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Anna Katherine!

#

Roll Your Own

One of the biggest issues with writing any paranormal beastie is the need to bring something new to the table. With everybody writing about vampires these days, why should someone want to read about yours? Let's say you want to make your vampires stand out from the pack by being different from your everyday Count Dracula stereotype. Where do you start?

Well, there are lots of cultures out there with their own versions of vampires (one of my favorites is the Bulgarian vamp, which has only one nostril). You can add a lot of originality to your work by just exploring new (to you) folklore.

But what if you don't want to go the Western vamp route or the "borrowing from elsewhere" route? What if you want to make something all your own?

So let's say you want to make up something new and shiny. Problem number one with that is: If you make up something that has nothing in common with a vampire, what makes it a vampire? Why isn't it called a Thubmert?

(The secret answer to this is, there is no reason why you can't call something a vampire. "Vampire" is just a word we made up. Maybe in other universes, "vampires" are what people call post-it notes. You're an author; you can use whatever words you like. But authors don't write in a vacuum, and eventually you're going to have to do a major bit of hand-waving to get your reading audience to follow along with those sorts of shenanigans.)

Let's say that if you want to call something a vampire, you need some recognizable vampiric traits to build off on. Right off the top of my head, I can think of: Dead, drinks blood, pointy teeth, drive to create more vampires, can't go in sunlight, a stake through the heart kills them.

The next step is to twist these traits around -- make them mean different things, or take them a step further than tradition normally does. Some examples:

• This Dinosaur Comic makes an excellent example of the "taking extremes" method by categorizing most vampiric traits as just OCD, thereby letting people easily "deduce NEW vampire facts and weaknesses!"
  
  
• Stephanie Meyer's took the idea of "vampires can't go out in sunlight" and changed it from "because they burn!" to "because they sparkle and will reveal their true nature" -- while the sparkling thing is dopey, that's a pretty neat turn on the folklore. The basic fact stays the same, but the reason for it changes.
  
  
• Doctor Who's "Vampires in Venice" episode has vampires that don't really have pointy teeth, even though they appear to -- they're an illusion supplied by the human brain, to attempt to give some kind of warning of their being predators.
  
  
• Scott Westerfeld talks about the process of boiling down vampiric traits for his excellent vampire novel Peeps, taking on the sexual aspects as well as the unnerving reasons why vamps might want to create more vamps.
  
  
• And in my own book, Salt and Silver, vampires can suck blood... through their butterfly-like proboscis. When I first created these vamps, all the other demons in my world were insect-like, so I wanted to continue the theme. It wasn't until later that I discovered that Filipino folklore had butterfly-vampires. So I ran with it, and now, as I write the sequel (starring the vampires front-and-center), I'm trying to bring a little more juice to the creative processes. One of the driving principles of my worldbuilding is that to have a part of someone is to know them utterly. In the first book, true names were things to keep out of bad guys' hands -- but blood is just as much a part of someone as their name. So what does drinking blood do, if even a tiny sip can give you a world of knowledge?
  
  Ladies and gents: My vampires are academics.

Keeping vampires (or other mythological creatures) fresh -- but familiar -- is a tough row to hoe, but you'll be amazed by what you can come up with using a twist of thought and a little reductio ad absurdum logic. Have fun!

Note: I can't recommend enough the use of motif indexes for writing research (mine's the Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, but others include Aarne's The Types of the Folktale and Uther's recent The Types of International Folktales). Vampires are tale type E251: "Vampire: Corpse which comes from grave at night and sucks blood", but there are a ton of little details and stories to follow up on in there.

#

Thanks so much!

Non-European Vampire Linkgasm

In keeping with my run of guest posts on vampires, this is a special edition of Linkgasm focusing on our bloodsucking (and lifesucking) friends outside of Europe.

Vikram and the Vampire, translated by Richard R. Burton (1870). More about the Baital Pachisi. A more academic essay on the Baital Pachisi.

Article about Chinese vampire movies, "Horror, Humor and Hopping in Hong Kong," by Ian Whitney.

Vampire Anime Wiki.

The pontianak and the langsuir, from Malaysian and Indonesian folklore.

From the Carribean, the soucouyant.

Bonus vampire movie links!
Vampire Movie Database, with brief summary information. Searchable. Everything from Vampire Vixens to Sodium Babies.

The Top 70 Vampire Movies of All Time at Snarkerati.

Bonus vampire book review link!

Dead Sexy by Kimberly Raye at Read React Review.

Related Post:
Werewolves All Over The World.

Making the Paranormal Real: Boundaries and Consequences

This post was originally written for Midnight Moon Cafe.

I was a reader and writer of science fiction and fantasy long before I read romance, and in many ways my reading tastes still reflect that early influence. I tend to favor paranormal romances that have dense worldbuilding that makes sense to me and holds up to questioning. I think, in general, that's a good thing, because anything that can contribute to the realistic/true feel of a story means the reader is less likely to be thrown out of their imagination and into the cold. True, a paranormal romance must focus on the relationship between hero and heroine, but their conflicts can seem much more real if the world in which they live is fully realized. In urban fantasy, which often tends to series format, a well-developed world is even more necessary, and should grow more complex over time, so the readers (and writer) don't become bored.

To me, one of the keys to creating a world that seems real and layered is to ensure that the world has boundaries. And that when those boundaries are trespassed, there are consequences.

It doesn't matter if the paranormal character is "traditional" (vampire, werewolf, ghost) or a creature you've created. As with any other character, you have to decide what they want and why they can't have it. Those issues can be tied tightly into the paranormal aspects of both the character and her world. Barriers to achieving their goals might be supernatural or magical as well. For example, what if the hero can only live in sunlight and the heroine can only live in the dark? Those limitations instantly generate an external barrier that yields conflict, which yields plot. There's a reason the "he's a vampire, she's a vampire hunter" setup is so popular!

I think the more integral the paranormal elements are to the characters and their problems, the richer the story can be. If their problems are "normal" problems, then why make the characters paranormal at all?

Characters with paranormal boundaries to cross means the stakes (wooden ones, even!) can be even higher for them. A vampire's failure might mean not only death, but eternal torment. A werewolf might not merely lose her boyfriend, she might accidentally eat him. The consequences can significantly ramp up the story's tension. Overcoming them can result in a more intense payoff at the story's end.

Finally, boundaries and their consequences are important as turning points in the plot. The characters might have a single significant problem to overcome at the book's climax. Leading up to that, the characters can face subsidiary problems, all of them related to the paranormal worldbuilding elements. First, the hero is freed from the tree where he's been imprisoned. Second, the heroine demands payment for freeing him – he must pay her a portion of his soul. He doesn't remember they were once lovers and she gave him part of her soul; he refuses. Third, the heroine begins to die because the hero hasn't complied. Each boundary causes a problem for the characters, and they must find a way to cross it – or avoid crossing it – and survive the consequences.

Related Posts:
Paranormal Appropriation.
Choosing Your Paranormal Creature.
Why Werewolves?

Choosing Your Paranormal Creature

This post was originally written for the Paranormal Romantics blog.

Vampire or werewolf? Demon or elf? Ghost or ghoul or unknown creature that goes bump in the night?

One of the earliest decisions most writers make when conceptualizing a novel is the characters. When writing a paranormal, one of the most important aspects of character is, obviously, the paranormal element. It's easy enough to choose if you only like vampires, or have a contract to write a story about a demon, or just got a nifty new book about pookas. But sometimes you have no guidelines, or want to try something new. How do you decide?

I thought about these issues when I first wrote the synopsis for THE MOONLIGHT MISTRESS. I already knew the historical period was going to be World War One, and the setting Europe. There had to be room in the story for an erotic-romantic plot as well as historical and paranormal details. Because that time period isn't often used in romance or erotica, the setting would require a fair amount of detail. Thus, I decided not to stretch too far with my paranormal element. I chose werewolves.

Choosing a paranormal creature that's popular in fiction doesn't mean one can't use that creature creatively. I researched werewolves, thought about the werewolf fantasies and romances I'd read, and decided what I had liked and disliked, and what I thought would be useful for my particular story. I added my own interpretation to the mythology in ways that would underline my story's themes, and made their nature an integral part of the plot. Werewolves worked perfectly in my story as a symbol of nature. They could be in conflict with new technologies emerging as a result of the war.

That, I think, is the most important part of choosing a creature: seamlessly blending the myth with character and plot and theme, to make it intriguing and surprising to the reader.

I could have chosen other approaches. Many non-European people participated in World War One, and I could have chosen a creature from African or Indian mythology who had traveled with the soldiers, but that choice would have required mythological and cultural research in addition to the historical research, and I had a limited period in which to complete the novel. I'd still like to try that for a future story, though, and have been keeping an eye out for resource material. In that case, I could perhaps explore themes related to colonialism.

For another example, I might have used vampires as a way of underlining the vast loss of life. Ghost stories were common in World War One, and would have easily tied in to themes such as grief, mourning, and memory. The possibilities are endless, and worth thinking through before you begin to write.

Guest at Paranormal Romantics

I'm a guest over at Paranormal Romantics today, talking about "Choosing Your Paranormal Creature."

Multi-Purpose Worldbuilding

This post was originally written for Star-Crossed Romance.

In The Moonlight Mistress, werewolves are an important element. However, the world they live in is much like our world; the werewolves exist as "secret history." Though several of the characters know about the existence of werewolves, and one finds out about them in the course of the novel, for the most part they exist out of sight.

The setting of the novel is World War One Europe, so the primary worldbuilding for the novel consists of historical detail. Also, it's an erotic novel, so sexual relationships are also very important. But I wanted the paranormal elements to be inextricable from the rest. If any one of the three elements was removed -- history, erotica, werewolves -- the story would collapse.

I've always been told that every detail of a story should be relevant in more than one aspect, and that's even more important in speculative fiction, where so many more details are required. For example, a particular song and its topic tell the reader something about the world as well as something about the character who's chosen that song to sing. If the character is singing too loudly, he might alert his enemies and thus propel the plot forward. I tried to use duplicate or triplicate relevance whenever the werewolves appeared in the story.

First, the werewolves served a plot purpose. The main romantic couple in the story meet because the hero is trying to gain information about a secret laboratory studying werewolves; later, when he shares this with the heroine, it demonstrates that a level of trust has been established between them. Her reaction shows how she's come to feel about him. When they take action together (deepening their relationship) to save the werewolves, again the werewolves are propelling the plot. At the same time, the personal relationship between two werewolves comments on the relationship between the main couple; both couples are thrown together because of the war, and both pairs discover they have something powerful in common.

One of the soldier characters is a werewolf. He has werewolf problems which draw in his human friends and have consequences for them. Each time he acts like a werewolf, the plot is moving, his character is being reinforced, and the reader is being reminded that they're reading a fantasy.

Related posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Types of Paranormal Romance.

Werewolves All Over the World

I think that the werewolves currently depicted in paranormal romance are, gradually, creating a new idea of what a werewolf in fiction ought to be - in other words, reader expectation is being affected by what mythological details writers choose to present, or invent. Also, of course, writers who read in their genre can't help but be influenced by it.

There are plenty of werewolf types I haven't yet seen in paranormal romance, and I'm wondering if, as the subgenre ages, we'll see more different types, as writers try to stand out from the crowd and as readers grow tired of the "same old thing."

Here are a few to get you started:

The Lobisón is of Argentinian and Brazilian origin. The idea is that the seventh son in a row (daughters don't count in the seven, and a seventh daughter in a row will be a witch) will turn into a werewolf. The Lobisón spends the rest of his life wandering in the wild, eating carrion, and attacking any humans he sees; if the human survives his bite, the saliva turns them into a Lobisón as well. He'd make a great character for a Gothic, wouldn't he? Or, of course, a "Beauty and the Beast" story.

The Finnish werewolf usually is cursed to have the second form, either from being bespelled or accidentally breaking a taboo. They aren't usually happy about this, and hang around houses, hoping to be recognized for their true self (a perfect romance theme!). They eat animals for the most part, rather than attacking people. Cures include being called by their true name or being fed bread, or both. And perhaps True Love could factor in?

Portugese werewolves are called lobis-homems, easily spotted because of their short yellow tails. Like the Finnish werewolves, the transformational ability was bestowed by a spell. The curse compels the victim to roll in crossroads dirt, which incites them to change into wolf-form and run howling into the night. They don't attack humans, except when the lobis-homem was created by evil arts; the evil ones are set apart by the presence of a demonic mark somewhere on their body, or something strange about their eyes.

This is a classic book on werewolves, and often cited: The Book of Werewolves. I also thought this book looked interesting: Werewolves: A Field Guide to Shapeshifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts.

If anyone has any good resources on different types of werewolves, please pass them on!

Related posts:
Paranormal Appropriation.

Romancing the Beast.

Why Werewolves?

Werewolves in Moonlight Mistress.

Tate Hallaway Guest Post - "If You Built It..."

Please welcome my guest, Tate Hallaway!



If You Built It...

When Victoria asked me to write about world-building, I was stymied. What world-building? I didn't invent Madison, Wisconsin, after all. It's just this place, you know? I was particularly baffled because in my other life as a science fiction writer when people talk about building a world, they mean literally constructing a planet and populating it, inventing culture, economies, religion, politics, and even sometimes an entire language. From scratch.

Meanwhile, most urban fantasy worlds have characters who speaking English, have recognizable job, and come from real places you can find on any map…

…yet not.

Aye, there's the rub.

The world that the urban fantasy author builds is a very subtle one, and no less complex. It's the kind that takes something familiar and asks you to imagine -–no, believe in -- something lurking just under the surface, something some part of you has always sort of suspected might be there. In my opinion, an urban fantasy works precisely because it’s so very anchored in the real world, only the perspective is a little sideways. You suddenly see the shadows more clearly. What was once nebulous gray solidifies into… a vampire? A werewolf? A genie? A ghost? A fairy?



For me, as a reader, I appreciate the author who can make me look up from their novel that I'm reading and start looking suspiciously at all the other riders on the bus. Is that bearded guy reading the stock pages secretly a werewolf? What about that young mother with the stroller? Does she fight demons in her spare time? Is the bus driver really a troll?

Yes, but how is it done? How do you get readers to buy into your fantasy? I don’t really know for sure, because not everything works the same for every reader. However, I can tell you some of the elements that I use and that I've read that seem to me to be successful.



* Don't stray far from the… truth. There are a lot of things out there already that have a lot of what the corporate world calls "buy in." You might not really believe it works, but most people know that leaving milk out attracts fairies, brownies in particular. If you write a story that builds on an idea that already has a lot of mythical power to it, your world automatically feels more "real."

* Remember that the truth is often complicated. You might remember hearing that milk attracts housecleaning fairies, but did you know that brownies have a darker side? It’s been written about in several classic Irish folktales, and, while you don’t have to only use what’s "provable" via earlier legends, when you do there's a kind of "Oh, yeah! That makes sense" that can happen for readers. Even if they're not familiar with the same source material as you, readers have a good sense of what rings true. Plus, as a bonus, after they read your novel and check out brownies on wikipedia they might be pleasantly shocked to see how "like real life" your depictions were. I used this with Mátyás, my dhampyr. I came across an entry on dhampyrs in one of those Vampire Encyclopedias and I thought: Oh, I totally have to use that!

* Truth is always full of the sublime, the ridiculous, and the down-right hilarious. One device I use a lot to make my vampires seem real is to point out the joke. Because life is silly, and when you highlight what’s humorous about a vampire who has to live in a coffin in someone’s storage locker, it seems perversely more true. Humor, when used right, kind of breaks through what actors call the "fifth wall" between player and audience and the experience can resonate as more personal and realistic.



* The devil is in the details. The more you ask yourself what would it really be like to be a [fill in supernatural creature of choice] the more your world begins to flesh out. And thinking beyond the obvious helps too. Sure, vampires are suited for night shift jobs, but which ones? How about a job, like coal mining, that goes from dawn to dusk and effectively takes the vampire out of the sun all day? And then you have to ask, how can I make *that* interesting?

And maybe you can't. The important thing is to consider every possibility, go down every road, and explore the viability of all ideas.... You might not end up using them all, but the more you’ve worked out the questions, the deeper and more rich your world becomes.

Good luck and happy building!

Tate Hallaway is the author of the Garnet Lacey vamire romance series that started with TALL, DARK & DEAD. Her current release is DEAD IF I DO (May 2009). She lives an alternate life as an award-winning science fiction novelist.

Historical and Paranormal: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

For my December 2009 erotic novel for Harlequin Spice, Moonlight Mistress, I combined a historical novel with paranormal elements. The book is set during the early days of World War One, and begins with a romance between Lucilla, an English chemist and nurse, and Pascal, a French scientist. They're trapped in Germany when war is declared and must escape together. I could have proceeded from there to write a perfectly straightforward wartime adventure novel, but I love science fiction as well as romance, so it turns out the reason Pascal is in Germany in the first place is because he's investigating rumors of a werewolf held captive by an amoral scientist. Soon, two werewolf characters are introduced, one a soldier and the other a spy, and their role in the war and their relationship is woven into the novel's main plot.

I love historical romance, but even more I love historical science fiction and fantasy with romance, or romantic elements. There's something about the mix of flavors that draws me in; I get an extra buzz from the story when more than one genre element is present. I loved Colleen Gleason's Regency vampire-slayer novels (The Gardella Chronicles, beginning with The Rest Falls Away: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles) and the time travel aspect of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Susan Krinard's werewolf romances (beginning with Touch of the Wolf (Historical Werewolf Series, Book 1) do a wonderful job of fitting paranormal creatures into nineteenth century history. From the fantasy side, Judith Tarr's novels such as Pride of Kings and Caroline Stevermer's When The King Comes Home (A College of Magics) mix magic and romantic elements into history.



I think the main reason I love combined flavors is that mixing genres is a way to avoid the same-old, same-old of historical romance. The plot usually runs like this: hero and heroine meet, family/money/status/scandalous past/amnesia keep them apart, then they are brought together once more. For me, those plot complications become more compelling if the family issue is that a werewolf needs to marry another werewolf or he can't have werewolf children, or if the scandalous past is only because the heroine isn't human and doesn't have human standards of behavior. I don't know what to expect, and the reading experience becomes more exciting as a result.

From a marketing standpoint, cross-genre books can be a problem--how do you market the book? Is it a romance/erotic novel, or is it a paranormal? Should there be a clench on the cover, or a man turning into a wolf? Will the book be shelved in Romance on Science Fiction and Fantasy? Do the readers of the two genres have differing expectations, so in trying to please both, you please neither? For Moonlight Mistress, at least, this was less of an issue. As an "erotic novel" rather than a straightforward romance, I had a little more freedom in how the plot and relationships progressed. Though there are several romances in the novel, they proceed in different ways, and end at different stages: one clearly Happily Ever After, one on the brink of a marriage that's clearly only the beginning of the relationship, and a third, a ménage, still in the formative stages. Adding werewolves merely added a new flavor to the blend.

(This essay originated as a guest appearance at Romance Junkies.)

Related Post: Types of Paranormal Romance.

Romancing the Beast.

Why Werewolves?

Werewolves in Moonlight Mistress.

Romancing the Beast

Paranormal romance almost always features the hero as a paranormal being and the heroine as an ordinary human. How does this resonate with gender relations and power relationships in our society? Is it a way of expressing women seeing men as another species? And does it all come down to fairy tales?

I'm going to ramble on these ideas for a bit, and hopefully I will shake some ideas loose that I can think on further.

Kresley Cole's books, for example Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night, are among the exceptions--in her Immortals After Dark series so far, usually both hero and heroine are paranormal beings.

However, for the most part, a paranormal romance follows a human woman, usually one who is "ordinary" or "normal," as she encounters for the first time a paranormal world running parallel to her own. In this new world, she's suddenly in peril, and she must rely on her Beastly Rescuer (whether vampire, werewolf, or magical warrior) for her safety. Along the way, she provides something to the Beast that is missing from his life, as he provides something that is missing in hers, and they fall in love.

This is the most basic version of the paranormal romance. It resembles the structure of many historical and category romances, as well, only replacing the top-lofty duke or marquis with a vampire, or the foreign billionaire with an alpha werewolf. In all cases, the hero is of a type the heroine has never before encountered. Often he's more forceful than she would like, more domineering, more arrogant. The plot forces her into his world, and with his help, she learns to live there and to both mitigate and tolerate his masculine and/or paranormal dominance because, after all, he's more powerful than she is. She finds happiness in his world. If she had never left home, she would never have found happiness.

I wonder what it is about this fantasy that's so enduring, and so forgiving of sub-genre? Is it really the Cinderella story? Cinderella is raised to wealth and privilege through the prince's eyes. We don't know for sure that's she beautiful, only that she's got endurance to withstand her stepmother and stepsisters. We do know that it's the prince's notice that drags her into a new world. If she hadn't attended the ball, he would never have known she existed. Is there also an element of moving into a new stage of your life?

Cinderella chose to attend the ball. Her action led to her happiness. In most versions of Beauty and the Beast, the beauty is sent to the beast as payment for her father's debt, just as in some paranormals the heroine falls into danger because her ancestry pre-disposes her to danger: she might be a werewolf's biologically-destined mate, or be the daughter of paranormals who fled from another dimension. However, once captive to the beast, the beauty acts on her own to get to know the beast, to see through his beastly exterior and into his emotional soul. The beast resists her intrusion, but gradually gives in.

Are paranormals Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella? Or both? Or neither? Or simply the fairy tales for the modern world?

Related Posts:
Normative Heterosexuality and the Alpha Male Fantasy.

Why I Don't Like Vampires.

Types of Paranormal Romance.

Paranormal Appropriation

There are a lot of paranormal romances and urban fantasies on the market, and certain mythological creatures--vampires and werewolves, for example--tend to be used a lot. For that reason, I can understand why writers look a little farther for inspiration, and hunt for mythologies that haven't been used as much in the romance genre.

However, often, to me, the borrowing feels like stealing. I'm particularly thinking of occasions when an author uses mythology or folktales from, say, Central America or China or India or Africa, and uses that research in tandem with characters who are all white. Why should, say, shapechanging jaguars change into white men, when jaguars are native to the Americas and white people are not? Wouldn't the jaguars change into Native Americans, or mixed-race people who are part Native American? If not, why not? If it's presented to the reader with no explanation, has the writer thought through the implications of choosing to make a jaguar shapechanger white? How will readers respond to the choice, consciously or perhaps more importantly, unconsciously? What is the meaning of that choice for the excluded people? And if non-white people are not present as the hero or heroine, are they included in the story in other roles? Are they characterized with the same depth as the white characters?

It's not as if it's forbidden to have a non-white hero or heroine. In fact, the urban fantasy I've read (I have by no means read it all) is more racially diverse than straightforward romance. (Some of this might be due to self-selection.) Paranormal romance is a little less diverse than urban fantasy, based on my extremely unscientific sampling, but still it's rare to find either a hero or heroine who is non-white.

White were-jaguars bother me because it feels as if the non-white people don't exist, and worse, as if they've been deliberately excluded. Excised. Edited out. Sometimes the non-white characters are there, but in a subservient role, and that, too, is disturbing in the way it mirrors real-world racial and class issues without attempting to subvert or confront or even mention them.

It feels to me, true or not, that this exclusion and suppression has been done for the author's comfort and convenience, as if they don't want to bother researching the mythology in depth, and don't want to learn about the other culture; the author may not have "intended" to do so, but by not thinking about the issue, the result is exactly the same. I'm left with the impression that an author has absconded with the "cool parts" and used them however they liked, at the same time giving their hero or heroine an "exotic" cachet which they have not earned and which they might even be exhibiting in an insulting manner. I can only imagine this feeling is much worse if you see your own culture being taken.

There are examples that I find hopeful. I love that in Marjorie Liu's Dirk and Steele series, the shapechanging cheetah from my favorite of her books, Shadow Touch, is African, and even gets his own story told in The Last Twilight. An African man can change into an African animal, and he is one of the main characters with an active role in the story. It seems logical, but how often does that happen in paranormal romance novels? Nalini Singh and Eileen Wilks are also among those writers who have included non-white characters.

As a side note, how often do writers treat other cultures as if they are dead and in the past, when they are not? I don't think anyone today worships the Ancient Egyptian gods, but plenty of Egyptians are still around. The descendants of Aztecs and Mayans and Incans live everywhere, even though their empires are fallen. Native Americans have living cultures. They aren't figures in historical dioramas, to be played with like dolls. They are people.

I'm grossly oversimplifying many issues here. There's no way to reduce cultural appropriation, cultural imperialism, and racism down to one blog post. I still think it's important to think and speak about these issues, in genre and otherwise. Writers, I think, have a responsibility to think about the implications of their writing, and how their writing about these issues will come across to readers.

My voice, though, isn't the important one here. Here is some further reading that I found helpful.

Here are two essays by author Vandana Singh, Some Thoughts on Writing (Or Not Writing) The Other and As Others See Us.

Appropriate Cultural Appropriation by Nisi Shawl and Writing the Other: A Practical Guide by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

Who Can Tell Your Stories? and Resources for American Indian Research at Debbie Reese's excellent blog, American Indians in Children's Literature.

Shame by Pam Noles.

Describing Characters of Color in Writing by N.K. Jemisin.

An essay on racism by the late Octavia Butler.

Race and Science Fiction at Ramblings of An African Geek.

A humorous article on How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

Related Posts: Feminism in the Tang Dynasty by Jeannie Lin. Writing African-American Romance by Evangeline Adams. Types of Paranormal Romance.

Werewolves in Moonlight Mistress

The first thing I like about werewolves is that, unlike vampires, they are alive. And they will eat you. All up.

Second, I like the fur. Who wouldn't? Warm, furry werewolf to snuggle up to at night? And when they purr...oh, wait. That's cats. Well, you get the idea. Can any romance heroine resist digging her fingers into her werewolf boyfriend's plush pelage?

Third, I like that erotic wet dog smell...no, wait. The rich odor of raw meat...wait. Oh, yeah. That wonderful scent of pine forests and crisp mountain breezes.

Really, none of those things show up in Moonlight Mistress. What I like about werewolves are the same things I like about wolves. Wolves love their families. Wolves can be playful. Wolves put females in charge of many important duties, such as locating suitable dens with adequate nearby food supplies and controlling the pack's matings and thus its future genetic health. For that reason, I'm rarely fond of werewolf heroes in romance who are overwhelmingly dominant.

Those are the traits I borrowed for my werewolves in Moonlight Mistress. The first werewolf character is female, and though so far her attempts to start a family have been disastrous, it's an important goal for her; in their world, werewolves are rare, and must be born rather than made. The second werewolf character, male, is a bit of a rake but that behavior is related to his search for another werewolf with whom he can create a family. He's playful, and willing to let her control him in certain things. Their shared goal leads to her accepting a marriage of convenience, so they can have children who are also werewolves. Someday, I'd like to write a novel about their marriage of convenience and how it progresses, which wasn't within the scope of Moonlight Mistress.

Related post:

Of Wolves and Men.

Crystal Jordan Guest Post: How To Make The Mating Instinct Work

Today's post is by Crystal Jordan, author of On the Prowl and many other works. You can visit her blog here: http://www.crystaljordan.com/blog/ and her website here: http://www.crystaljordan.com/

Welcome, Crystal! It's great to have you!

How To Make The Mating Instinct Work

So, I saw a list of plotlines an author "has to work extra hard to make me accept" on Victoria's blog the other day, and when I read this quote:

Destined Love and/or reincarnation and/or Genetic Mating or scent-marking or whatever that makes the relationship instantly gel

I took it as a challenge. You see, I write shape-shifters. Often. Some of them have this destined mate thing, some of them don't. I like to mix it up from one imaginary "world" to the next. Mostly so I don't get bored--I have to admit, that one isn't for my readers' benefit.

I do think it's possible to pull off the "destined love" and "genetic mating" thing. However, I completely agree with Victoria that nothing should make a relationship instantly gel. If that's why a writer uses the mating instinct, then I think it's a contrived plot device that's as annoying as any other that readers encounter. I'm not saying my work is always perfect on this front, believe me, but I do think there are ways for the mating instinct to be part of the plot without seeming forced.

First, I think destined mating should cause more problems than it solves. Yes, the mating instinct should not be seen by either or both (or all, in the case of menage or more) parties as a good thing. In fact, it's usually something they want to avoid, manipulate, control, or run away from like the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels. An example from my own work: Antonio and Solana are the main characters in one of the novellas in my newest book On the Prowl. He's the newly minted leader of a Pride of panther-shifters. One of the biggest problems for these shifters is keeping the population up because they can only breed if they are mated, and not everyone is guranteed a mate. Antonio tracks his mate down only to find she's a non-shifter--someone who will never be able to breed, someone who was kicked out of his Pride for just this reason before he came home to assume leadership. So the fact that the two of them are mates is something that makes neither of them very happy. They don't want it, they fight against it, and they have to come to terms with how being together will negatively affect their lives.

And that's where I come to the second must-do on making mating work. I think the writer needs to make it obvious that these people would choose to be together even without the mating instinct. The instinct may be what makes them completely unable to walk away from the person they see (at first) as being the least-acceptable partner for them, or the worst possible choice they could make, but it can't be the only common ground they have to stand on by the end of the story. In other words, the romance has to be believable even if you didn't have the mating instinct going on in your book.

However, I do think that having that mating instinct is just an extension of most people's desire for a "soul mate." That one person (or people) that was fashioned just for you. That perfect match. With shape-shifters and destined mates, it's a more culturally recognized institution for that kind of species, but that doesn't mean the people involved don't have as much (or more) work cut out for them in making the relationship work. Plus, for me, the mating thing? Is hot. I love the instantaneous connection (and, in my books, that means sexual connection with a heat-rating that's off the charts and orgasms that register on the Richter scale), but insta-connection should never, ever equal insta-relationship. Everyone has to grow and earn their happy ending, mates or no mates.

Related Posts:
Why I Love the Marriage of Convenience Plot.

Intricacies of the Marriage of Convenience Plot.

Where's the Sexual Line in Paranormal Romance?

Types of Paranormal Romance.

Why Werewolves?

This post is a recap of my guestblog for the Full Moon of Werewolves at Lori Devoti's blog.

My Harlequin Spice December 2009 release, Moonlight Mistress, is an erotic novel set during the early days of World War One. It also happens to feature two werewolf characters, one male and one female.

The werewolves aren't the main characters; their presence generates plot because an evil scientist tortures them with his experiments. It's the human characters who rescue them and send them off to what I hope will be another story, their own story.

So why have werewolves at all? It's not as if World War One doesn't provide enough plot all on its own. However, I realized pretty quickly that World War One is not the most ideal setting for an erotic romp.

World War One supplies plenty of conflict, but it all revolves around soldiers, refugees, the wounded, and the dead. Despite my deep interest in reading about the war, I didn't want this book to be grimly realistic. There are plenty of memoirs and other works of nonfiction where those details can be found. I chose to use enough details to give the reader an idea of the time period, but not so many as to give them nightmares.

Adding a werewolf plot meant I could inject a little fantasy, to let the reader rest from the unrelenting horror of war. The werewolf element could open the door for further thoughts of fantasy, thoughts of erotic fantasy. Not only are werewolves fantastical, they can be sexy, too.

It was a tricky balance of realism and fantasy. Too much realism, and the book isn't fun anymore. Too much fantasy, and the book loses plot tension. I balanced the two elements by giving my werewolves realistic characterization.

One werewolf is a soldier, the other serves as a spy. Their werewolf attributes are more science fictional than fantastic. I didn't want to travel too far from a "realistic" or "mimetic" approach, so I decided their transformations would not be linked only to the full moon, and that the full moon would not force a change. I also decided that being a werewolf was hereditary, and though interbreeding with humans was possible, the trait rarely passed down in its entirety. I didn't go into the actual mechanics of transformation, but described it as a physical process rather than a magical one. I wanted the werewolves to seem as if they belonged, as if they, too, were part of the historical setting.

I hope it worked! You can find out in December of 2009.

Related post:

Of Wolves and Men.

Why I Don't Like Vampires

I have never loved vampires.

Rather, I don't like the idea of vampires. This does not stop me from reading vampire novels, of course. I just don't prefer them.

The heart of my dislike is vampires killing humans for their own eternal life; secondarily, the way certain types of vampires treat humans as food only. Most contemporary vampire fiction elides this or, better, creates their own lore so that their hero/heroine is not a murderer. I like that type much better; for instance, it doesn't seem so awful to me if a vampire feeds on their lover in small amounts, giving pleasure or psychic strength or something in return. All of the vampire books I've enjoyed have either mutuality (P.N. Elrod), vampires as a separate species who don't need human blood (J.R. Ward, except I get annoyed that their blood-partner must be of the opposite sex, which isn't logical to me in a biological sense), or vampires who are considered evil because they kill, and the consequences of that (Barbara Hambly). I've also enjoyed vampire stories about humans who fight evil vampires, as in Colleen Gleason's work.

The other thing I dislike about vampires is that, in romance at least, the vampire hero (nearly always a hero, not a heroine) is almost exclusively given an "alpha male" personality. It makes sense for this to be so; instead of the Duke of Manlypants sweeping in and whisking the heroine away to a new, luxurious lifestyle, the Vampire Studly swoops in and whisks the heroine into immortality, or at the least through a whirlwind of supernatural sex. The only difference is in scale. At base, both are the same fantasy: powerful male chooses heroine out of all others and places her above all others, and she is safe and loved forevermore. If one's feminist ideals are bothered by the idea, it's easier to believe in if Mr. Alpha really is more powerful than you because he's eight centuries old, or can fly, or can mesmerize a city with his glowing gaze.

It was interesting to read Joey Hill's The Vampire Queen's Servant, which features a female vampire. I had hopes that I would enjoy it more, but it only reinforced my opinion that what bothered me about vampire books was the power differential. The vampire's gender didn't matter to me. Even in a book like that one, with its complex and subtle issues of dominance and submission, it was the vampire ultimately having the power of life and death over his or her romantic partner that kept me from buying into the fantasy.

If you're looking for an inventive atypical vampire romance, I recommend Marta Acosta's Happy Hour at Casa Dracula. It's really fun, with some interesting variations on both vampire romances and chick lit.

Related Posts:
Normative Heterosexuality and the Alpha Male Fantasy.
Romancing the Beast.

Where's the sexual line in shapeshifter romance?

Today's wild speculation--where's the sexual line in shapeshifter romance?

I don't think I've ever read a paranormal romance, or even a fantasy novel, in which a sex scene happens between one human partner and one partner who's shifted into an animal form. With one exception, I've never even seen such a scene happen when the shapeshifter partner is in a form partway between human and animal. However, I have seen the human partner naked in bed, after sex, with a shapeshifter in animal form. That's apparently okay, so long as no sex is involved, only petting the pretty fur. The main example I recall is in Marjorie Liu's Tiger Eye, but I'm sure there are more. Is the idea here that petting the animal form is a deeper form of acceptance of that animal self?

Obviously, the main taboo against shifted/human sex is bestiality, and of course there are the physical obstacles. But is there more to it? What about transitional forms? Assuming the shapeshifter still keeps his or her--but usually his--human mind, does the form matter? Kate Douglas' erotic Wolf Tales begin with a man in a transitional form, in fact trapped in that form, and parlays the scenario into a "Beauty and the Beast" theme. It's surprising this isn't seen more often. Perhaps in a culture of depilation, an extra-hairy man is not seen as hot? Ahem. I'm sure that can't be true for everyone.

In The Moonlight Mistress, both partners are werewolves, but they only have sex in human form. When one is human and the other wolf, they are comfortable with one another so far as physical caressing goes, but I felt there's an added intimacy when both are human and thus more vulnerable (especially relevant to one of the characters). However, I think I'd like to try a "Beauty and the Beast" story one of these days. I think there's all sorts of potential there for conflict, and thus interesting plot.

I'd be interested in hearing about other examples of shapechanging in relation to intimacy in romances, or in erotica.

Happy Friday!

Related post: Romancing the Beast.

Types of Paranormal Romance

I first entered writing through science fiction and fantasy, and still read from that perspective when, these days, I read paranormal romance. I enjoy deconstructing the elements of the genre, and comparing and contrasting paranormals to non-romantic fantasy. Maybe it's because I don't have cable.

Here are some of my thoughts. There's a theory I've heard from various writers that the Romance and Mystery genres are based in plot, while the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres are based in setting. It's easier to blend one of the plot-based genres with one of the setting-based genres, so it's not uncommon to find science fiction mysteries and romantic fantasies. Paranormal Romance is different from straightforward fantasy most obviously because it's intended to be Romance, with the central focus of the story on the relationship between two people and how it grows and develops. The paranormal element is integrated but must be secondary to the Romance plot. Worldbuilding is used to support that central plot, and might even be subservient to it; for instance, I think "destined mates" is so often part of paranormal worldbuilding because it offers so many opportunities for relationship conflict and/or plot complication.

I've recently been reading Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy, which discusses different ways to categorize fantastic literature. An aspect of paranormals I find interesting is that they're often intrusion fantasies, in which the fantasy element (werewolves, psychics) intrude into our world where they are supposedly impossible. I think this serves multiple purposes. First, for a reader who's new to fantasy, it offers an "in." The paranormal element is introduced to the reader just as it's being introduced to the hero or heroine. Second, it offers a way to isolate the hero and heroine from their everyday lives; they might be in the midst of a city, but if they're on the run, and she's trying to hide her vampire boyfriend, the emotional intensity is increased, just as when the protagonists are isolated in a cabin in the woods, or in a road novel. The fantasy element thus helps to make the plot happen. Third, there's an added element of, well, fantasy. It's often more enjoyable to the reader to be taken far away from their daily lives when reading; I think that's one of the reasons for the continuing popularity of historical romance, as well. If it's not our world, it's easier to suspend our disbelief. Fourth and last, I think it's a matter of structure. There's only so much room in a novel, and we already know most of the room in a Paranormal Romance must be given to the romance. There's less room for worldbuilding, so if the setting is non-fantastic, all the better. The writer can imply a great deal about the society from which the werewolf hero came but it isn't necessary to show it unless it's relevant to the romance.

There's also portal fantasy, which is less common in romance than it used to be. It's almost the opposite of intrusive fantasy. First, the protagonist is shown in his or her normal world, doing normal things; then they step through a door (or glowing blob, or cave) and enter a fantasy world. For instance, the heroine is bored with her life as an ad executive, but finds a mysterious amulet at a flea market and is transported to Medieval-World, where she falls in love with a centaur. Time travel stories fall into this category, as well, if the protagonist goes back in time. This type of story requires more space given to worldbuilding in the fantasy world, and thus less to the romance. I think that's why this type of fantasy more often becomes a fantasy with "romantic elements."

Finally, some paranormals are immersive fantasies in which the whole world is different from our world--Nalini Singh's futuristic paranormals are an example, or Eileen Wilks' werewolf series—but that's more rare. The immersive form often works best in a series, which has more space to explore the world. I think this type might be becoming more popular. Urban fantasy is a form of immersive fantasy.

I highly recommend Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy, from which I borrowed the terms intrusion fantasy, immersive fantasy, and portal fantasy.

I would love to hear opinions, agreements, disagreements, with the ideas I've presented here. My thoughts are a work in progress!

Related posts: Romancing the Beast.

Paranormal Appropriation.

Historical Paranormals.