Sonya Bateman and I want to know: what do you want to see in urban fantasy this year? I don’t mean vampires and werewolves, Battle Extreme round XVII. Urban fantasy has expanded to include a whole mess of folklore and mythology, and it shifts rapidly to include things I’d never heard of before. So what are you interested in, and what are you tired of? You like genies, dislike faeries? Dig selkies living in the Central Park pond (they’d be very green) but are tired of crouching gnome, hidden leprechaun? What weird thing would you never expect to see in an urban fantasy? (I am personally hoping for an entire LINE of Sheela na Gig urban fantasies: She’ll kick your ass… and her vagina doubles as a U-Store-It!)
Sonya has two ARCs of her next book to give away to random commenters (US only please), to increase your impulse to Google bizarre mythology. Hit me with your best folkloric oddity.
Jeremy is indeed a proper alpha.
As for what I want? I want a heroine who isn’t catnip to everybody she meets. People have different tastes, and she can be sex incarnate to the designated love interest (whether that’s at first sight or after he or she has seen her in action for a while) without every other character, good and evil, who is attracted to women wanting to get in her pants.
I also want badly to see something that I think came up in discussions here: a story where the paranormal character who meets the cliched “destined mate” is already in a relationship, and chooses the original relationship over the person biology is trying to demand.
Man this thread has legs!
Jeremy is a good alpha. Bran, the Marrok of the Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson series epitomizes a good alpha.
And the comment about catnip got me to thinking; I’m actually really tired of every male (and usually female, but always the males) being Perfection Personified. Every single one stupendously hot, every one with abs that ripple like the sea, tight butts, hung like a clydesdale *and* perfect lovers, and all of course not at ALL vain and tripping over their perfect tongues for the heroine. I really don’t care if the hero is perfect. I care if he’s perfect for HER, and for a heck of a lot of reasons other than “OMG he’s HAWT!!!”
@Robin – Yeah! Like I said, I want more heroes built more like Barry Manilow then Arnold Schwarzenegger! Just like guys are attracted to different physical types of women, so too are women attracted to different physical types of men!
I, personally, find rippling abs and big muscles repulsive. I like my guys tall and scrawny and a lot older then me! Shallow, I know, but there’s something about a guy who’s scrawny with grey in his hair (and, hopefully, a big nose) that makes me want to jump his bones!
Estelle:
As for what I want? I want a heroine who isn’t catnip to everybody she
meets. People have different tastes, and she can be sex incarnate to the
designated love interest (whether that’s at first sight or after he or she
has seen her in action for a while) without every other character, good and
evil, who is attracted to women wanting to get in her pants.
Yes. THIS. This times a thousand. I am extremely tired of scenarios like this, and it’s pretty much the main reason I’ve slacked off on reading the Sookie Stackhouses.
This, sadly, is one of those threads I can’t stay away from because there’s so much I want to see in a romance novel that I’ve never seen and I’m praying some author sees things my way and writes something like I want. Even if it’s a short story they put up on Fiction Press or their own website to get people hooked on them so they’ll buy their books.
ANYWAY – @Estelle & Anna – Totally agree! Frankly, as a woman who’s spent her entire life being told she’ll never be wanted and whom now, after years of being emotionally beaten down she’s accepted that – I’d actually love to see a woman whom everyone wonders what the heck the hero sees in her – including herself! It would be nice, just once, to see someone who’s never felt wanted be wanted and get afraid of being wanted. Running away from love. (Kind of fits in with my “Pissing off Aphrodite so they’re punished by being hooked up with their True Love” thing from earlier.)
I know I said it before in another post, but it takes a stubborn man to win the women in our family. My own dad had to propose to my mom SEVEN TIMES before she said yes. She was a single mom of three boys, her ex used to beat the crap out of her, then he left her for an 18 year old and never paid a dime in child support. She was determined to never marry again. Then she was set up on a blind date with dad. Mom was my dad’s first ever girlfriend. He fell in love and kept asking until she said yes. Five weeks after their first date they were married. This year they’ll be celebrating their 38th anniversary.
I want to see that in a romance novel. Though, like I said, I want a woman who has never been wanted and doesn’t believe it now. And he’s a man who knows he’s in love and won’t give up.
For those people who were asking for Siren related urban fantasy, can I recommend “Siren Beat” by Tansy Rainer Roberts – it’s awesome little novella, and should hit the sweet spot for those people with that craving.
“…a minor group of man-eating sirens on the docks of Hobart would not normally pose much of a challenge for Nancy, but she is distracted by the reappearance of Nick Cadmus, the man she blames for her sister’s death.”
It’s good stuff – well worth a read.
And the publisher’s offering it as a free download in the lead up to the Hugo Awards later this year.
1st off: in London, not eligible for prizes
I would like to mention Galford’s The Dyke and The Dybbuk as a lesbian jewish urban fantasy romance (I read it because I so loved her previous Fires of Bride, an even better and weirder story)
There’s a Chinese based fantasy series just started by Lindskold but only book 1 is out so far: 13 orphans. I think each is going to connect to one of the chinese years: rat, snake, pig and so forth. I don’t think that one is romance, but is an interesting theme to ground her myth in.
@hapax
“(yeah, she never calls the kem ferrets, but we know the truth) “
They’re not ferrets. They’re FSOs (Ferret Shaped Objects) 🙂
Thanks for the linkage!