Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Personally, I started reading vampire/ paranormals because of Anne Rice’s books.After she found Jesus and gave up on witches and vampires to write about Jesus, I had to find other sources.

I never made it more than half way thru one of Laurel K Hamiltons books. My eyes hurt from rolling them so much. LOL

I like the genre because although the subject IS familiar it has shown itself to be non-formulatic. There are a lot of variables in most of the stories, and there are some fantastic world building authors contributing to the genre.

Maggie Shaynes vampires are much different than J.R. Wards and then you have darker ones such as Patricia Brigg’s series. There is variety.

Reading the vampire/ paranormals have taken me from just romance sections of the bookstore into the nerd infested sci fi/ fantasy section and I’ve broadened my reading out a bit.  ( I can pick on nerds, I live with one LOL)

I’m not uber-old, but I am at that point that age and life and the short length of it are smacking me in the face, what with being too old to have a new baby (personal choice there), and aging parents and teenage (gasp) neices…There is a strong draw because in paranormal stories, time is not a factor anymore.  Nor is age or aging, or the weakening of the physical or mental.

I’m always thinking maybe it has to do with the aging of the readership, we’ve been sexually revolutionized (previous post) and are large and in charge females, but damn! we’re still frail and human, and that’s the next step we’re overcoming in our fiction.

Or is it just me?

Honestly, I like the fun mix. I’ve always been a pretty big fan of anything with magic in it, and when you combine it with romance, it’s even better.

But more so, I would say I read for the kick-ass heroines.
Sure maybe it’s kinda cool to have a vampire/werewolf/zombie/witch hero, but much more fun is the way the women often get to dominate.

I loved Anita Blake for about say… 5 books? 6? When she was all about kicking butt and taking names, she rocked. But as soon as it got all love-triangly and then the whole sex vampirism thing… I quit. I refuse to read them now.

So what I guess I’m saying is I don’t read them for the kinky otherworld sex.

Paranormal kinky sex is usually hilarious.  A nice neck bite during coitus is pretty sexy, however ripping her throat out because he can’t control his passion and hunger for her will usually have me laughing my ass off. She never minds because it’s hot sex.  I say SEX IS NOT THAT GOOD.  Don’t rip my damn throat out or I’ll rip something off of YOU!

Now the shape shifter sex scenes can often creep me out.
One of Kenyons, the shapeshifter dude had to stay “inside” the woman and shift time for her so she wouldn’t realize how long it took before he could withdraw. WAY up on the creepy scale.
And Jacqueline Frank’s last one the sex scene between the man and the leopard(?) shape shifter was enough to stop me from reading the rest of the book. OFF the creepy scale.

Didn’t think you’d read HP past book two, or something. Or am I confusing you with Sarah?
And, yes, I’d kill the dog if I thought I could get away with it… I do not need to start Monday morning with that on my carpet.

I thought Twilight was okay - definitely YA - for that period in your life where you think Donny Osmond is Sex God - but perfectly readable. And you can annoy teenagers endlessly by loudly expressing a preference for Jacob. (The not dead suitor. Always the better bet.)

I wonder what it says about me that I have never had the least desire to read a paranormal of any sort?  Nor, frankly, have I ever wanted to write one.  I suspect there’s a bunch of readers/writers like me.  Okay, I confess - I hope there’s a bunch of people out there like me.  Either that, or I’m WAY out of touch.

I agree that one of the important appeals of this genre is the idea that the woman is in control.  I think it goes beyond that, however, as there are plenty of “real-life” modern romance novels which can fit into that description too.  In the paranormal novels, it takes things one step further, the woman is not merely in control, she is powerful, and she kicks ass.  She is often aggressive, confrontational, sexual and generally acts in ways to bust feminine stereotypes. 

I think this genre is not merely a safe outlet for expressing these non-traditional yearnings, this genre is a expression of subversion, in all the best possible ways.

I am thoroughly insulted whenever someone says that the current Urban Fantasy or vampire trend is the result of Laurel K. Hamilton’s books.  I didn’t start writing Urban Fantasy with this dream of being the next LKH.  I didn’t know I wrote “Urban Fantasy” until someone at Romantic Times Book Club told me I did.  I did not need LKH to break some invisible wall and let the books I write out of my head for me.  I would have written them if she had decided to become a lawyer instead.

The idea that one author inspires an entire genre or trend to blink into being is absurd.  A genre forms when there is a readership for it and a felt need for writers to create it.  Urban Fantasy sprang largely out of a Fantasy/SciFi base that had become clogged with elves on quests and a Paranormal Romance following that was tiring of male vampires finding their soul mates and turning human.

For this anyone to credit the surge in vampire fiction of any genre on one author’s success is like saying that any vampire fiction anyone writes is a watered down imitation of that author’s work, or that these books would never have found a readership without the help of that first, miracle author.

As for Twilight, what did people think was going to happen with those books?  YA had become a land of Bridget Jones Jr.s, and suddenly someone throws out West Side Story with vamps and werewolves.  Most of the people sniping are just pissed that they didn’t think of it first.

I read paranormal cause ooo, magic and I like seeing people’s take on old myths and kick ass heroines rock and I am way too fascinated with violence for my own piece of mind. OTOH, you have some of the biggest alpha jerks in this genre. Anyone remember that article about vampires, werewolves and bears, oh my, and how the genre gives the jerk alpha a chance to reemerge? Did I just make that up?  {And was waiting for you to mention Buffy; I think she had a huge impact, just like Xena did, on kick ass heroines}

Anyway, not sure if I started reading fantasy and then paranormal romance or the other way around first.

I like the Twilight books (ok, not so much the third’s ending), just very melodramatic (not saying that’s a bad thing, and HP was plenty drama-fold, omibob he was a school bully and you have an evil dude after you find some priorities man). But anyways, I thought they were good. Plus, Edward’s devotion was just nice, and it was cool wondering if it was based on blood lust or actual personality liking (cause I personally didn’t find her all that great. She committed way too much TSTL behavior). But the trailer looks great: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/trailers-trailer-vi2380464409 (Whoever created that song rocks!)

Ok, reading this over, I think I need some sleep.

I’d just like to inject that “Blood Ties” (fuck all if I can remember the author) came before Hamilton.  And Rice before her.  And several other authors were dipping into that genre.  HOWEVER Hamilton was the easiest to read.  Not because of memorable characters but because of the writing.  There was no complexity to her writing.  It was written very much like a quickie HEA romance.  You KNEW what you were getting when you picked up her stuff.  Not so much with the others.

I also don’t associate all vampire stories with Urban Fantasy.  I actually think of Emma Bull and Charles de Lint WAAAAAY before these stories.  They just wrote in the more fae theme.

I think the surge of vampire fiction is because of our mentality as readers.  We WANT to be seduced.  We WANT to be told we are hot sexy bitches with crazy powers who will turn the eye, head, and boner of an undead hunk who’s been around foreeeeever.  We (as readers) WANT that visceral NEED that all these vampires seem to have.  We WANT to be needed.  YET WE DON’T.  So this fiction gives us the release.  And from there it turned into a genre surge.

Frankly, I’m tired of it.  Even in series where the vampires aren’t the focus, if they come on stage I make the frowny face while I read.  I don’t WANT to read about them anymore.  I want solid characters who want to LIVE.  Not secretly die “the little death” when some dude sucks out their platelets.

I like the freedom that the paranormals and fantasy/sci fi books have.  I like the world building.  I read enough books that without variety, I’d get bored.  And there is freedom in exploring sexually explicit themes that I would never visit in real life.  You can go a lot of places in a paranormal that you just can’t go in a “standard” vanilla romance.

First off I should have stayed away from that blog and second I probably shouldn’t have read the comments.
Do people understand how idiotic they sound when commenting on something they have no understanding of? And I really hate it when Romance is called “formula fiction.” There is nothing formula about it. I
really wanted to remind this gentleman that Bram Stoker’s Dracula has heavy sexual undertones in it. The seduction of the brides. The purity of Mina, Harker is not able to take Mina’s viriginty on their wedding not,  when he forces her to drink.  It’s all there. Dracula, in the book, simply doesn’t look like Gary Oldman or Gerard Butler or Bela Lugosi.  He is still the Alpha male.
I think the appeal of paranormal, which I write, is the chance to explore different mythogolies and histories. I like to read paranormal romances as well.
When I read I want to escape and books containing magic and witches and dragons and vampires do it for me.
This brings to mind a training class I recently attended from my job, led by an older retired military man. Upon seeing a romance novel next to my class materials he launching into a tirade about romance not being real writing and so forth. I was livid. I did manage to shut him up when I calmly reminded him Jane Austen was considered Romance Novels in her day.

Okay I’m getting off my high horse now. ;)

I’m a little drugged up right now (dayquil) so I hope I make sense.

Hrm… I’ve always read fantasy and science fiction books, so the leap to urban fantasy was a no brainer to me.  I’ve also always loved vampire novels and I started with Anne Rice.  I’ve read Kenyon, Ward, Hamilton, Butcher, Harrison, Meyer, Shayne, Kressley Cole, Vicki Pettersson, Lynn Viehl (love love love), Feehan, Briggs (love love love even more), Blood & Chocolate author,  and I’m sure I’m leaving some authors out.  I’m always looking for more vampire romance books. 

I have to say that I started with LKH after Anne Rice.  It was there and I was aware of it.  I think it’s because I shop in the science fiction fantasy section of the book store before I hit the romance.  My friends don’t really read much romance so I picked up the books that they read and recommended to me.  I never really watched Buffy though, oddly enough.  I think that LKH did help the growing trend of vampire romances because it became mainstream, hardcover, New York Times Bestseller and it was fantasy.  It showed publishers that people wanted this type of material and that they should take a chance on writers who wanted to write about these topics.  I still read LKH in hopes that there will be some plot inserted into the books like her first six.

The only paranormal romance I’ve ever been able to read all the way through is Monica Jackson’s “Mr. Right Now,” and I don’t even think it was categorized as paranormal romance.

I couldn’t even finish JR Ward’s “Dark Lover,” and I was really disappointed—I SO wanted this to be my new addictive series. Especially with the talk about sexy guy/guy almost-love! Sigh. Oh well.

However, I do read tons and tons of Fantasy/Science Fiction, and Fantasy’s subgenre of sorts, urban fantasy. Love that stuff.

My question: is urban fantasy just paranormal romance, without the romance? Or is there a bigger difference between the two genres?

That’s pretty much the identical process of analysis I went through, but the variables are still kicking my ass. Could be one, could be any, could be that there were a couple authors that really caught the public’s attention and then it was a publisher-bandwagon thing. The market drives itself for a while, but then there’s usually some fall out. Still, boot-cut jeans are still a big thing, so maybe vampire romances are here to stay, like regencies, which are just as weirdly specific when you think about it. Why do I like regencies? I dunno. I just do.

Oh, I forgot to say what a fabulous phrase “befanged man-titty” is. Thanks for that.

For this anyone to credit the surge in vampire fiction of any genre on one author’s success is like saying that any vampire fiction anyone writes is a watered down imitation of that author’s work

Jennifer

No, it’s saying that publishing houses saw a phenomenal success and started buying up tons of stuff that conceivably fell into the same category. Candy’s comment has little to do with writer’s intentions (although they are certainly some who must have taken the sub-genre’s success into consideration) and more with publishing trends.

That’s why there was a surge of attention in YA fantasy lately. It’s not that it did not exist or that writers weren’t producing those kinds of stories it was that the audience had grown and publishers were buying ‘em up.

Comment one:  anyone else ever read Varney the Vampire?  Bless Dover’s Thrift Editions. There were definite sexual undertones and overtones in the book and the illustrations, but it was also hard going like lots of mid Victorian gothic novels.  It was also wildly successful although it was later overshadowed by Dracula. 

Comment two:  What is this about Twight Moms?  I know that one definition is people who are members of a group at this name, but I also think it is term for women who are fans of Twilight who have been accused of stalking the actors involved in making the movie.  This creeps me out a bit or maybe I just don’t understand.

Willa said,

My question: is urban fantasy just paranormal romance, without the romance? Or is there a bigger difference between the two genres?

I’d say that’s the basic difference, yes. In straight urban fantasy, you have little or no depiction of romance or sex (Although Heinlein had the sex without the romance—or was he always SF?). With paranormal romance, the weighting of the two aspects is flipped and the focus is usually on the relationship. But I’d say that paranormal romance has a lot more variety (and sheer numbers, these days). So while it’s difficult to find a straight fantasy with much in the way of romance, it’s fairly easy to find a paranormal romance that has a lot of world-building and adventure plotting. (Plugs self) I think I fall more in that latter range.

Susan Sizemore’s Law of the Blood series from Ace dark fantasy from 2001 is still some of the best vampire fiction out there. (with the worst covers!) Better than her romance series as far as I’m concerned. 

If you asked me Fonzy is already out of his skis and back at Arnold’s.  I’m 98% over it. I’ve read Susan Sizemore, LKH, SK, Kensley Cole, Maggie Shayne, Lynne Veihl, Angela Knight etc etc etc. I switched for historials during the Buffy years but now I’m right back to only historicals with an occasional werewolf thrown in. It just doesn’t do it for me anymore. 

My 2% continued love of vampires is from downloading episodes of Moonlight.

Sorry maybe someone already answered but Tanya Huff is the author of the Blood Ties series.  Also she wrote the Keeper series-starts with Summon the Keeper-awesome book with a talking cat.
Don’t forget Emma Bulls War for the Oaks.  Wasn’t that one of the first Urban Fantasies?

Sarah, what is your deal with Twilight??  I loved that book!  I thought it was a great twist on the whole teenage vampire plot.  The other books in the series are really good, too. 

The movie looks like it’s going to be cheesy, tho.

I’d push the urban vampire beginning back to at least The Holmes-Dracula File and An Old Friend of the Family by Fred Saberhagen.  And for angsty vamps, it’s hard to beat Yarbro’s Count St. Germaine, who first appeared in Hotel Transylvania in 1978, long before Anita Blake hit the streets.

So no, this isn’t a new phenomenon.  Having it shelved as romance is new, but the stories aren’t new.

I’d just like to inject that “Blood Ties” (fuck all if I can remember the author) came before Hamilton.

  Tanya Huff’s Blood series.  Great fun for those of us from Toronto and its environs, since she used real places.  Read ‘em back when I was a teenager.  Saw a few episodes of the show and wasn’t impressed, but that might just be because I have a very specific image of what the characters look like in my mind and the show didn’t match it.

  One thing I noticed, though - when I read them when I was a teen, I was cheering for the vampire.  When I re-read the series a few years later, I was cheering for the human hero ( in a general way, not a win the ‘prize’ ( heroine ) way. )  I never seem to find the heroines interesting no matter how much butt they kick.

Is Vampire chicklit (Mmm… Chiclets…) like MaryJanice Davidson’s “Undead and Unwed” etc. series? Or is that series paranormal romance?

And is LA Banks’s Vampire Huntress series just regular Urban Fantasy, or what?

I need more definitions! How can I pretend to be erudite and learned about a genre if I don’t even know where half its books belong?

Can I just say maybe blog prof missed the memo that vampire stories of all kinds have been around a long time and people like them. Hello?! When I started reading LKH I loved the mix of noir-ish detective with the paranormal because, hey, hybrids are fun. And although WE all know that romance does not equal porn, does anyone agree with me that the Anita Blake novels are now pretty squarely in the porn category? It has gotten to the point that the plot is just a device to string the sex scenes together. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think that’s why so many LKH fans got so upset with the direction the books went; they were enjoying the romance and then they got the porn.

My problem with Twilight has nothing to do with it’s crap writing, which isn’t much worse than tons of other books I have read, but the horrifying message it sends.  Edward is a straight up stalker, he hangs around in Bella’s house watching her sleep without her knowing (they did that on Buffy too and it was meant to be super creepy) and spies on her through other people’s minds.  Creeptastic.  And Bella is a terrible person for young girls to read about since she doesn’t want to do anything with her life except die so that she can be with Edward.  It’s all really really gross to me and sending a terrible message to teenage girls.

I wish that just about any other paranormal, or YA book had become so popular.

I wonder what it says about me that I have never had the least desire to read a paranormal of any sort?  Nor, frankly, have I ever wanted to write one.  I suspect there’s a bunch of readers/writers like me.  Okay, I confess - I hope there’s a bunch of people out there like me.  Either that, or I’m WAY out of touch.

Nope Helen, you are not the only one.  Just not my thing either.

So while it’s difficult to find a straight fantasy with much in the way of romance, it’s fairly easy to find a paranormal romance that has a lot of world-building and adventure plotting.

See now Esri Rose, I disagree there.  There’s a lot of awesome romance in fantasy—Sharon Shinn, Jacqueline Carey, Lous McMaster Bujold immediately come to mind.  I actually tend to prefer a book where the romance and the rest of the plot are in balance, and neither feels like an afterthought.  And I shouldn’t just mention the girls—Guy Gavriel Kay does romantic relationships wonderfully, for example.  Okay, Tolkein didn’t, but he wasn’t the master at EVERYTHING.

As others here have noted, what sells drives what’s published.  With women comprising a larger segment of the fantasy market than they use to of the old “sci-fi” market (we were always there, but the boys outnumbered us for a long time), it makes sense to me that fantasy novels more often contain real romantic plots (as in, the central couple have to overcome obstacles in and between themselves, as well as resolve the major plot complications, in order to end up together).

Myself, I read less paranormal romance than I do other speculative fiction.  The different ways of world-building vampires, werewolves, etc., interest me some, and I can see the erotic attraction of some well-written non-humans.  And when mythos is well-done, I really enjoy it.  But a little seems to go a long way for me when it comes to vampires, and I’m not sure why that is.  (But Esri, I picked up your book and Gena Showalter’s at Border’s this afternoon, based on reading excerpts, so obviously some paranormals DO ring my chimes!)

I did read the Twilight books, on my teenager’s daughter’s recommendation.  I enjoyed them—a light read, not a “keep on the shelf and read over and over” enjoyment, but then that’s true of most of what I read.  I liked Harry Potter too—of course, I used to teach Children’s Literature, and my definition of “good” is largely based on what hooks kids and gets them to read more.

Oh and I gotta say, “befanged man-titty” is my phrase of the week!

My 2 cents on Vampire chicklit—for me, it’s entertaining but for me mildly unsatisfying.  Mostly, I guess because it takes away the element of danger that makes the heroine (usually) earn her HEA.  So for me, it lessens the payoff if the hero is too safe.

That’s not to say I mean I want scary abusive heroes.  But generally, if you’ve bothered to write a heroine or hero that’s got a big streak of dark in their heritage, it’s more interesting to me if that’s explored.

E.g. Kim Harrison’s Ivy to Mary-Janice Davidson’s hero, Eric Sinclair.  This is not to slam her - it’s a case of “I like Tip Top Hokey Pokey icecream.  She’s writing Ben and Jerry’s Phish Thingammy”.  When I read the book it was a nice antidote to some angsty annoying My Life Is A Dark Room stuff.  It made me laugh, but it didn’t in any way haunt me.

The proof for me? I had Ivy’s name at my fingertips.  I had to go look up Eric.

SonomaLass: I only knew one of the names you listed (Bujold), so clearly I’m behind the times. And thanks for picking up my book!

Oh, and here’s a bit of fun trivia I heard (last week) on NPR’s radio news-quiz show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me..” Bram Stoker’s Dracula was patterned after Walt Whitman. According to them (I haven’t read it), it even says so in the book. Talk about your bisexual moody vamps… Booyah!

I remember in the 1997-1998 my two favorite shows were Buffy the Vampire Slayer and La Femme Nikita. I loved James Bond but thought he was an imperialistic chauvinist and idiot pig ( didja ever read the novels, he was an eeidiot!) but I wanted to kick ass too. So Buffy and Nikita perfectly melded my wanting to be an attractive kick ass woman (as the feminist that I am) and totally escapist as I was dealing with heavy shit in my life.

Who doesnt want to be a woman that can kick demon behind or put down a terrorist plot while looking super cute wearing designer clothes, lipgloss and heels and have time to have a steamy relationship with a tall dark and sexy man?  You dont have to appear weaker to be with this man. You dont have to give up your sex appeal to be strong and you dont have to be stupid either.  You can be a kick ass chick because he’s a super strong sexy killer in his own right. Its the ultimate wish fulfillment for a modern woman.

Prior to this period my reading tastes were more varied ( lit fic, classics, thrillers, mysteries, SF and romance). But at work I was dealing with lots of fucked up, sick and dying people and really didnt want to be reading anything based in the here and now. But I was a big time SF reader. And I had read Anne Rice with her angsty vampires that I thought were cool. I had read stuff by Tanya Huff and liked that her vampires werent whining all the time. I had read other stuff that was urban fantasy but there wasnt too many other memorable vampires until I read Anita Blake. ( I think urban fantasy is a subgenre of SF. While paranormal is a subgenre of romance).

I tell you I thought Jean Claude was fucking real and I though about getting myself a silver cross to protect myself from those scary bloodsucking fuckers. I remember awaiting every new installment like it was crack. I passed books on to my friends and got them hooked too. In the meantime, lots of folk (like me) were like “where can I get a hit of some reading that is like ABVH?”. Thats how I discovered Jim Butcher who has maintained stellar writing while LKH has churned out un-edited crap and made Anita a superwhore.

Of course people were already writing urban fantasy and the sucess of Buffy meant that lots of people were churning out stuff ( movies, books, videogames etc) to make money off stuff that was so popular. So couple that with ABVH fiends (that sent ABVH to the bestseller lists) looking for a fix and NY houses started to notice. And then of course they started taking a chance on some authors some who were writing ABVH-lite and others who were creating interesting novels based on the idea that creatures of legends and scary stories live among us. But now that NY houses keep out churning this stuff with absolute no regard for quality or craft- I am left with a new syndrome I call Urban Fantasy Fatigue Syndrome (UFFS).

Has anyone read P. N. Elrod’s vampire books? Her “Vampire Files” feature Jack Flemming, a reporter turned detective and nightclub owner after he died and rose as a vampire, in 1920s/30s Chicago. Her Jonathan Barrett books are set in Colonial and Revolutionary New York and Georgian England. I don’t remember when the first one came out, but it must have been late 1980s or early 1990s.

Arethusa: I stand by my assertion.  Yes, publishers buy more of a type once one author has a success, but for anyone to say that LKH’s success was the golden ticket for everyone else to get published assumes that if she had become a janitor instead of a writer, none of the other quality writers of the genre (Like Charlaine Harris or Kim Harrison or J.R. Ward) would have ever been contracted. 

We need to look at trends in what is being purchased and what is flying off shelves has more to do with readers than it does with the writers behind it.  If tomorrow I write a space cowboy book and it hits big, that doesn’t mean that I’m opening any doors for the space cowboy writers out there.  It just means mine was on the shelf first.  Space cowboy writer #4 might have had the same success if they had gotten there first.

Twilight is the best example of this.  YA experienced a slump, so publishers took a chance on something they did not have to offer their customers.  Is it the absolute best the genre has to offer?  Probably not.  It could have been anyone’s book about vampires going to high school that hit that big.  Does that mean other YA vampire authors would not have sold if Meyer had not?  No, not at all.

That’s where I take issue.  It’s one thing to say, “So and so was the first in a wave of such and such books” and another entirely to say that someone “spawned” an entire genre, which implies that other authors owe their careers to the creationist hand of the first author.  That is what the people at the linked blog were implying.

Candy:  I was taking more of an issue with the people commenting on the linked blog.  You didn’t really imply anything beyond the fact that LKH’s success made publishers hungry for similar dollars.  We all sorts of cool.

One of the comments on the linked blog called current vampire authors the “spawn” of Anne Rice and LKH… two authors who are so very different they should not even be compared, let alone lumped in as writing in the same genre (hullo, Anne Rice writes Literary Fiction, LKH is all sorts of Urban Fantasy, maybe Paranormal Erotica these days), as if all authors writing vampires now fell off of AR and LKH like seed pods or something.

Yes, publishers buy more of a type once one author has a success, but for anyone to say that LKH’s success was the golden ticket for everyone else to get published assumes that if she had become a janitor instead of a writer, none of the other quality writers of the genre (Like Charlaine Harris or Kim Harrison or J.R. Ward) would have ever been contracted.

Nobody said LKH is a golden ticket. Its more like a wake effect. She made it big first and made it that much easier ( not the right word) for other writers writing that kind of urban fantasy. Look at American Idols sucess. After American Idol hit it big suddenly you saw a million variety talent elimination shows on TV. If some one else had got there before LKH we would have been saying Vampira du Sangre started it all. Those authors may or may not have been published. I think Charlaine yes. Not so sure about Kim Harrison since in some ways certain SF houses are kinda conservative. I really hope Ward wouldnt have been published if LKH had never been born but I dont know.

BBridges, I had the same reaction to Twilight as you did. Its message seemed to be: “Girls! If you meet a guy at your high school who (1) is controlling and domineering and claims he is “addicted” to you, (2) sneaks into your bedroom and spies on you at night, and (3) warns you that if you go out with him, he may kill you, TOTALLY GO OUT WITH HIM. Nothing bad will happen. He’ll be the best boyfriend evar!”

It also has the world’s most passive female protagonist.

Anne Rice is literary fiction? Me no think so. If Anne Rice is lit fic then so is Danielle Steele. Just cause its mainstreamed and they shelve in the “fiction” section dont make it lit fic.

Dey put Cheez Whiz, Cracker Barrel cheddar, Velvetta singles,  gouda, feta, ementaler, Baby Bel and dem odder cheeses in de dairy section at me supermarket. Dont mean all dem is good cheese or is even cheese.

What do people think about vampire chicklit, by the way?

Is this blue rectangle the ballot box?  Okay, here’s my vote.

NO.

Nobody said LKH is a golden ticket.

No, you’re right, the linked blog said that LKH and Anne Rice created an “unholy” union and the resultant wave of vampire authors are their “spawn”.  That is far more insulting to authors currently in the genre.

I really hope Ward wouldnt have been published if LKH had never been born but I dont know.

And right there, that is the insult that I’m talking about.  “If X hadn’t been published, then Y wouldn’t have a career.”  That is what I take offense at.  Y doesn’t owe X anything, because Y puts in Y’s own work.

Anne Rice is literary fiction? Me no think so.

Anne Rice uses vampires as avatars who live outside of the realm of morality in order to answer her own questions about God and Catholicism.  Her choice of vampires as opposed to another type of supernatural creature is immaterial.  She doesn’t write about vampires, she writes about the human relationship with God.  That is not genre fiction by any stretch of the imagination.

BBridges: *boinks head on desk* omibob you are so right. (I personally didn’t notice Edward’s stalkish tendencies just because Bella was so damn stupid she needed someone to rescue her every five minutes). Oh geez, totally forgot he used to go into her room- ewwww- when she was sleeping (which I gotta say, shows how bored he was; watching people sleep is really not that interesting…though she talks in her sleep so maybe it’s like listening to the radio).  As for the message that all she wants to be with Edward in life, I’d agree but temper that with in a lot of vampire books, it’s about the heroine giving up her life to join the dark side with lover boy. Not saying it’s right, but that’s the way the cookie seems to crumble.

Ok, here’s my question- how is it certain authors have us completely ignoring tendencies we hate? Like Ward. When I dissect the books into pieces (the asshole, junkie heroes, the very blah heroines, the unscary villians and a God that is creepy beyond shit…though the last isn’t a bad thing always), I’m like, these things bite (ha, a pun). But then I pick one up and it sucks (ha! another one) me in like a mixture of very bad, illegal drugs. It’s not the writing persay (though I don’t seem to have the same hatred against the h’s as everyone else), so what is it?

Oh, oh, I remember a funny vampire. But he’s a movie. Dracula: Dead and Loving It (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112896/); I liked it much better when I was younger but still funny. 

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes vampire YAs are much better. Don’t remember all that much from them, but if I’m correct one wants to get bitten because she’s dying, and the heroines are all freaked out about demon boy coming after them (as any rational fictional character should be). Someone who remembers the late 90s better will have to back me up though.

Orangehands: Do you remember L.J. Smith’s vampire diaries?  Not late 90’s, more early or mid 90’s, but incredibly good.  I still have them on my keeper shelf.  Not so much with the OMG STALKER tendencies from Twilight, so that’s a plus.

I’m a paranormal junkie, and I’ll stay reading my smutty vampires because, um, well, cowboys just don’t do it for me. Neither do corporate tycoons, regency rakes, or even Isaac Asimov, for that matter. That doesn’t mean I go rambling through the sci-fi or western section of my local bookrack and start on a I-hate-space-cowboy-we-are-all-full-of-stars-milady book cover rampage like those anti-romance snobs I read on that guy’s blog.

I don’t read what I don’t like. That whole article from a non-romance reader sounds like a “I’m too-cool for Fabio” set up to me. And the comments on that blog were even worse. Can you say nerd rage?  And Harry Potter?  HTF does that even get tangled up in the same conversation as LKH and vampire smut?  It’s undignified, I tell you. Conversation about YA books and urban fantasies with gratuitous vampire nookie should. not. mix. evar!

Anne Rice uses vampires as avatars who live outside of the realm of morality in order to answer her own questions about God and Catholicism.  Her choice of vampires as opposed to another type of supernatural creature is immaterial.  She doesn’t write about vampires, she writes about the human relationship with God.  That is not genre fiction by any stretch of the imagination

Sounds like you are saying Anne Rice cant possibly be genre fiction cause “she writes about the human relationship with God”. In other words Rice cant be genre fiction cause she writes about “deep stuff”. I read alot of genre fiction where the human relationship with the planet is a major theme ( Beauty by Sherri S Tepper) or the junction of gender, race and class oppression (Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas). I could go on and on but I am tired and cranky. Also I wont cause I dont really buy this whole idea that all genre fiction is formulaic drivel blah blah blah and only literary fiction has treatment of universal themes of the human condition. Thats what literary analysis and crit is for- to explore different narratives for other levels of meaning. Too bad that too many folks in their ivory towers are busy wanking off over their highbrow lit to actually examine the products of popular media epsecially genre fiction.

Oops I am making typographical errors. I must go to sleep.

The only insult I meant to JR Ward is that I think her writing sucks. I just wish she had never been published because I hear the screaming of all the murdered trees that had to die for the indignity of becoming the pulp on which her books were written…
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/065njdoe.asp
JR Ward is a dhirty dhirty tree mhurderer!!!

Since my preferred genre of romance is medieval romance I hardly noticed any sort of boom in the paranormal romance.  Honestly, to me it’s just always been there. I like vampires and werewolves and ghosts. All of those make for interesting writing and reading. That’s why I watched Buffy the vampire slayer until she shunted off Spike as nothing more than a monster and thusly she could never be with him. Made me want to take her head off. =w=;;

but I digress.

From what I’ve looked at, description wise, the entire Twilight series is pretty boring sounding to me. It might have had my attention when I was a younger, but not now. (this coming from a person who adores such works as Harry Potter and Narnia. I HAVE A WAND AND I KNOW HOW TO HIT YOU WITH IT! XD) *achem* but yeah, you’re right as far as that it being geared toward teenage girls. It seems to me to be the only group that would squeal with joy for it.

passcode: area51 >.> it’s not been moved, it’s underground!

I think I’ve read 2 Anne Rice books.  She never did it for me.

I did DEEPLY enjoy Anita Blake until the old shark was jumped.  I’d say Narcissus in Chains was the death toll, but I kept on reading UNTIL.  I don’t even remember the titles anymore, but there was the long-ass story featuring the Hallowe’en wedding, and somewhere in there was a police-related call out to a strip club and bodies in a pit.  That situation was not resolved in the book.  In the next book, Ronnie (best gal pal, who’s name is explained in parenthesis in EVERY book) mentions off-handedly that the recent serial murder case was really stressful for Anita.

WTF?  The series goes from being essentially a mystery novel with paranormal themes and romantic/sexual overtones to a squicky porn fest that just ABANDONS the, um, er, PLOT.

I gave up on the Gentry series with the book that started out with her waking up from dreaming about sex and cookies.  The sex made all kinds of sense to her on account of all the studlies, but what was up with the cookies?  Ech.  I couldn’t make it past the first page.

Okay, enough LKH-bashing.

I’ve always preferred some romance in my stories.  The primary story can be anythere, but there has to be some romantic interest in there somewhere, or it’s not worth my time reading.  This is why I LOVED Louis L’Amour but couldn’t read Max Brand, for random example.

I occasionally think the Vampire thing is over, and what will be the next new thing?  (Demons, I figure.)  I enjoy the ways different authors create the vampires.  Really, the only thing they have in common is the blood-sucking.  I’ve seen them be cursed, a different species, a disease.  Some are evil, some are just alien, some are essentially people with fangs.

@ BBridges Oh I totally agree with you here:

Edward is a straight up stalker, he hangs around in Bella’s house watching her sleep without her knowing (they did that on Buffy too and it was meant to be super creepy) and spies on her through other people’s minds.  Creeptastic.  And Bella is a terrible person for young girls to read about since she doesn’t want to do anything with her life except die so that she can be with Edward.

I know I may be beating a dead horse, but that was the main reason why I refused to let my 13 year old niece read these books. Edward is creepy and also highly possessive and has close to abusive tendencies, with how he manipulates Bella with his “If you xyz, I’m going to kill myself” whines. He’s also supposed to be like what, a hundred or so and acts too much like a 17 year old? Come on.

And it honestly scares me that so many teenage girls out there are so in love with the books and with Bella…who in all honesty is a passenger in her own life. I understand that she’s supposed to be more or less a blank slate in regards so that girls can imagine themselves more in the role…but she is NOT someone that I would encourage anyone to look up to. Building your life around someone is NOT the way to go…/rant.

As for why I started reading paranormal romances, I got introduced to them reading YA lit, to tell the truth. The books that had the most impact for me where the ones that always had something magical or otherworldly around them. Or characters that weren’t always normal or considered outsiders. To me and some other kids who were different, we always saw it as some verification that we too, could have some kind of happiness. That we weren’t so freaky that it wouldn’t ever come, type of thing.

L.J. Smith- I remember those books! I had like seven of them when she had the inter-species couples (vamp/humans, witches/humans, two versions of shape shifters) I read those because I loved the action and the characters had their own goals and lives. They didn’t hang onto each other to fulfill their lives. If only they would come back into print, I’m sure they’d blow Twilight out of the water.

Anette Curtis Clause- Does anyone remember The Silver Kiss? That YA romance, although bittersweet was honestly ten times better than anything that Twilight could wish to achieve. The vampire actually acts his age and teaches the female character how to live and enjoy life and move on, rather than wishing to die and stay with him.

Sorry for the long rant, but I really despise the fact that these utterly mediocre series are getting so much press when there are so many better books out there for people to read

I just miss the Good Old Days when paranormal meant regular people and supernatural phenomena.  I miss my ghosties and ghoulies and haunted houses and so forth.

And I simply cannot get my brain around the concept of vampires being romantic.  Drinking blood is romantic???

Candy, you’re back! So good to see again; I’m so happy:-D
Even though it came at the expense of degrading Harry Potter-my favorite series of all time, but no matter-I’m just happy that you’re here and will be staying for the long haul, hopefully. Because Candy, baby, I’m willing to carve my heart out for you and letting you stomp on it if you so wish-that’s how much I’ve missed you! And please, do come here regularly, I was so happy when you came on last Thursday, I had thought you would be coming here everyday after that but you didn’t –it broke my heart so much, but still it’s Monday, a whole four days-but I’m not complaining, well not much any way ;-). And to tell you the truth, I didn’t even like the last Harry Potter book-the writing style was vastly different, there was a whole 200 page where Harry and Hermione were stuck in the various forests where they did nothing-BORING!! But the previous 6 books were pure gems and I will always love them forever and ever.
And the Anita Blake books-pure gem as well! They are my second favorite series of all time and I am happy to admit that I love the later books on the series. God, I tried reading the first books of the series and they were just pissing me off cause they were so predictable and boring, you knew who the culprits were because they would be the new vamps or lycanthropes in town. The AB books were very close to getting the axe when Ms Hamilton decided to add the sex on it-which I would say was a wise decision indeed. But there is one thing I hate and they are hypocrites, I mean you wouldn’t believe the amount of people that goes around saying in her site that they don’t like the new books and would never buy them, but then they turn tail and do buy them, and if you stalk them for just a short period of time then you would almost instantly find posts where they know about every minute details of the new book and are even begging people with ARC’s to give them some new info’s. Hypocrites I tell ya HYPOCRITES!!
Anyway, so good to see you again Candy, event though I wished you had cursed even a little, but no matter- as long as you’re here my world is complete :-D

Gosh darn it, I almost forgot; I even wrote a poem about you which, wouldn’t you know it, actually rhyme!! Iwas going to post it in order to lure you out but when I came today you were already here :-D
Thanks to all those endless hours that I’ve spent practicing rhyming in order to become a rapper (but bad news cause I’m hearing that people don’t like rapping these days much!). I dedicate this to our one and only Candy Tan of the Smart Bitches Trashy Books; I call it “Candy My Honey”. Enjoy!

Oh Candy, you’re as sweet as honey.
I’ll give you everything even all my money!
I’m crying so much its even annoying my Granny!
You are my life, my money even all my penny;
Babe come back, cause I cannot live any more without my sweet honey.

BBridges - no, the stalker element of Edward’s personality never occurred to me. I like to think of him more as a paedoplile…

Bit of an exaggeration, but in my head, he’s a hundred plus years old, and I find it creepy that he wants to go out with Bella at all.
That’a an adult perspective though - when I’ve talked about it with my daughter, she just reads it straight, that he’s a teenager who wants to go out with another teenager. 

Helena - Cinderella is pretty drippy too. There are a lot of wet heroines out there. My theory about Twilight is that it appeals to some highly specific developmental thingy - whatever it is that makes a teenage girl look at a sweet-faced boy band member and fall in love. 
From what I can see, they don’t read those concerns into the text - which isn’t to say they wouldn’t recognise the behaviour as off in real life. (In point of fact, when the school appointed a dodgy caretaker last year, they recognised inappropriate behaviour very quickly, and almost instinctively - I remember them sitting in the kitchen telling me how they avoided him in the corridor. ‘He talks to us.’)

I read urban fantasy, paranormal romance, whatever for fun quick breezy reads and because I like old myths and being scared.

I can’t say I read vampire chicklit or any genre like it for strong female characters any more than I would another genre because, frankly, I’d be disappointed. There can be a lot of ‘tell, not show’ with that, and the insistence on super-alpha hero vs alpha secondary interest really makes it difficult for the heroine to show. And the addition of supernatural powers makes it difficult for me to consider Miss Vampire Consort truely equal (nevermind superior) to the dude. And, like many other genres, the addition of a mysterious deep dark past or whatever tends to make for an imbalanced playing field- because if it’s the hero with the dark past, he’s drawing the heroine in or she’s stumbling into events that are far too complicated for her to really understand…. but if the mysterious past is the heroine’s, she needs the hero to help her because she’s too busy angsting and running away from mysterious evil-doers (surprise, surprise, the baddies she runs from are usually male too). (Who am I kidding though- it’s usually the hero who is the mysterious one, since the reader is supposed to identify with the heroine and it’s just easier to do it if the narration follows her and is kept to knowing mostly what she knows, which, if one wants a plot twist, needs to be not much about the Plot Of The Mysterious Past.

I also have to note that not many paranormal romances/etc are actually scary to me in the way that Dracula is. I like reading them, but because I mainly look to them for light reads, I prefer books that make fun of themselves and the genre’s faults. Perhaps I’ve been unlucky in my choice of books, that this is the impression I’ve gotten of the paranormal romance selection- but to be fair, it’s no worse than any other genre out there.

Here’s my theory (from a blog entry I wrote back in January):

I began to question what draws me to this genre. After all, would I really want a vampire husband? Would his courtly manners outweigh the fact that he’d never appreciate my cooking? That he could escape any argument by turning into a bat and flying out a window? That he’d upset the neighbors by mowing the lawn in the middle of the night?

It occurs to me that the love we have for these paranormal heroes reflects the relationships we have to the real men in our lives. However much we love ‘em, guys will always be a little…well, alien to us women. Some things about them are so darned mysterious. You’ve heard the whole Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus concept, right?

Let’s face it, Dracula’s rule over “the creatures of the night” is not really any stranger than the way guys can talk sports endlessly. The average werewolf pack is not any weirder than my husband’s drinking buddies. Think of the (stereotypical) man: fascinated by technology and videogames but won’t talk about his feelings, competitive rather than cooperative, enjoys war movies but is squeamish about changing a diaper. Did you think, when you were 12 years old, that you’d be married to that person?

If we can fall for a tortured, mysterious alien, demon or ghost, it makes our love for the odd creature watching TV in the next room all the more compelling, all the more probable.

I haven’t read all the comments (I know - a mortal sin) but I wanted to say.  Hello, at least girls have books written for them.  At least girls are reading.  Even if it is maudlin, emotionally manipulative pap. 

Pause.  Am going to read the comments now.

For this anyone to credit the surge in vampire fiction of any genre on one author’s success is like saying that any vampire fiction anyone writes is a watered down imitation of that author’s work

Jennifer

No, it’s saying that publishing houses saw a phenomenal success and started buying up tons of stuff that conceivably fell into the same category. Candy’s comment has little to do with writer’s intentions (although they are certainly some who must have taken the sub-genre’s success into consideration) and more with publishing trends.

Yes, agreed. I know of editors who buy books based on other books’ successes.  I see it as one book seeding a genre.  I.e., I suspect that we’ll look back in a few years and see Linnea Sinclair as a groundbreaking author in the Romance Science Fiction/Space Opera sub genre (if we don’t already).  It’s not to say that everyone after her is derivative, but that her success made a market possible.  I think one book can do that.

Anette Curtis Clause- Does anyone remember The Silver Kiss? That YA romance, although bittersweet was honestly ten times better than anything that Twilight could wish to achieve. The vampire actually acts his age and teaches the female character how to live and enjoy life and move on, rather than wishing to die and stay with him.

Oooh, good book!  Didn’t she write a werewolf one, too?

I loved James Bond but thought he was an imperialistic chauvinist and idiot pig ( didja ever read the novels, he was an eeidiot!)

Yep, read a few, and seriously—talk about Too Stupid To Live.  There’s always something he does in every book that’s intensely stupid and should have gotten him killed.

I did not read past book 4 in the HP series, because I didn’t like where Rowling was going with the series and character development, so I stopped reading it and made up my own ending.

Hey SB Sarah, you’ve mentioned this a couple of times here, I think, and now I’m curious: what specifically was it that you didn’t like?  I really dislike that book—Harry and Ron acting like hateful idiots, a “very important tournament” that we’d never heard of before and almost certainly would never hear of again, the rambling plot—but I guess what I’m really curious about is whether the things I disliked in the later books were obvious that far back.  (I lie—I hate book 4; it could have had half as many pages as it did and not harmed the plot in any way, and that sort of thing drives me up the wall.  I suppose I’m just looking for an opinion about that book that might be a little more objective than mine.)

I think that Vampires as Romance Heroes got a huge Popular Culture boost from the TV show Forever Knight in 1989.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Knight

That is the first time I remember falling in love with the possibilities of Vampires, not because they were alluring and evil (like Ann Rice’s creations), but because they were seeking redemption and love.  They were the archetype of Wounded Hero.  (And by hero, I mean heroic qualities, not just “look he’s protagonist of the story so he must be the hero.”)

Then Buffy (TV show starting in 1997) and Ange followed the same vampire/love/redemption model.

I’m sure there were earlier works, but my point is that I think we started encountering Vampire in general as a representative of True and Eternal Love in pop culture, and that easily, easily, easily made its way into Romance Lit.

What is a newer concept is Vampire AND slayer/police/PI/whatever as Kinky Sex Guy/Gal who is lottsa cruel and kinda uncaring/mean, in a world that is also cruel, uncaring, and mean.  Yes, they’re working on the side of good, but seriously I don’t want them on my side.

But back to Vampire as Romance Hero… what is more universal than wanting love and it feeling like you’ll never have it?  Or if you do, your beloved will never accept you?  Or if she/he does, you’ll still be separated from your HEA?

Ah, Romance.

I can only approach this from a personal perspective. And for me, personally, LKH opened up an entire new genre and world for me. A friend lent me one of her books, and within a day I’d bought 3 more. Soon I’d run out of her and was still hopelessly addicted, so I looked around to see what was similar. So yes, for ME, as a reader and non-author, LKH was an absolute springboard to a whole series of books and authors I never would have thought of trying before her. And it was only later that I discovered great authors like Emma Bull that I could see authors like LKH pulled from.

Urban fantasy and paranormals are now my by-far favorite books (though I’ve ditched LKH in disgust). I like strong dark complex heroes *and* kick-ass heroines. But more than that, I love the world-building, and the imagination. The way that playing with the supernatural theme can bring so many differing viewpoints to the field. The world that Patricia Briggs’ Mercy inhabits is a very different one than Kim Harrison’s Rachel, and both are fascinating and fun to explore. Lilith Saintcrow’s future world is just fascinating to me.

I tend to shop for these novels far more in the sci-fi/fantasy section than in the romance section for the main reason that I am not interested in romance/sex/relationship as the central theme to the story. Instead I like a character driven story with great world-building that maybe has some romantic elements. Hence Briggs, Ilona Andrews, Harrison, Kelly Armstrong and Lilith Saintcrow rather than Kenyon or Ward (both of whom I tried and couldn’t stomach). And I do urban fantasy because I’m not that interested in trad fantasy. I keep trying it and just can’t get into it at all. I can’t figure out what it is that turns me off so much. Futuristic world building okay but traditional fantasy not? Weird.

Anyway, like it or not, for some of us LKH did inspire us to look elsewhere for somewhat similar themes. I’m so glad I did because now I have a list of authors I feel far surpass anything LKH has done. But the early Anita books are still a good read, at least for me.

“Hi,my name is Lady T and I love vampires…”

“Hi,Lady T!”

Seriously,I’ve always liked vampires as my favorite horror movie monster(remember the days when vampires and werewolves seemed to only belong to the horror genre?) and yes, Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton are major contributors to the current paranormal parade of books we enjoy today. However,both of those ladies have gone off the rails there,due to their own personal demons taking over the driver’s seat.

I’m also a Buffy fan and the influence of strong female characters is what keeps this genre going,which is why I really dug the Anita Blake series for awhile but now prefer Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan titles much more. That professor guy sounded like he’s been living in a cave or something;he was shocked to find himself at Wal-Mart after all!

Oh,and I’ve only read the first Twilight book so far and liked it. Yes, Bella could be a little more alert but not every gal is a warrior maiden type. I did recently read Meyer’s sci-fi novel,The Host,and it
has two really strong heroines(one of whom is an alien). Definitely worth a read.

I dont really buy this whole idea that all genre fiction is formulaic drivel blah blah blah and only literary fiction has treatment of universal themes of the human condition. Thats what literary analysis and crit is for- to explore different narratives for other levels of meaning. Too bad that too many folks in their ivory towers are busy wanking off over their highbrow lit to actually examine the products of popular media epsecially genre fiction.

I write genre fiction. Clearly, I would never say that what I write is formulaic drivel.  I don’t have a huge ego about what I do, but at least I acknowledge that if there was a formula to follow, I would be able to crank out books faster than I am.

The point I was trying to make was not that because AR asks hard questions about the human condition, she is not a genre author.  The point I was trying to make was that she is not a horror author, because the vampires in her books could have been anything else.  The main plot of her books, at heart, has nothing to do with vampires, whereas LKH’s books, without supernatural elements, becomes a story about a single woman who collects penguins.

The only times I think Anne Rice has ever veered into genre fic territory are “Queen of The Damned” and “The Mummy”.  Of course, I’m not counting her pseudonyms and the erotica books.  I try to forget those, what with the wonky sex terminology.  Nethermouth.  *shudders*

I’ve mostly pondered paranormals that have an Alpha Male Paranormal Creature as hero.  I think these fill a similar niche to Dominant Alpha Male bodice-rippers of the past.  My theory is, in today’s world, it’s harder for women to accept being dominated by a man, even if they are seeking the dominant male fantasy.  It’s easier to suspend your disbelief if there’s an additional reason for the male to be stronger than you; for example, he’s immortal, or he’s much stronger than any human.

I’ve noticed the paranormal heroines have a wider range, at least in the selection of the genre I’ve read so far.  Rarely is a female paranormal paired with an ordinary human, while the reverse seems to happen a lot more if the paranormal is male.  Perhaps there’s a conscious effort to make the woman physically equal to the man, by giving them both paranormal strength/ability?

THE VAMPIRE QUEEN’S SERVANT was one with a human male and vampire female—any other examples?

And vampire chicklit—I’d presume it’s doing well because chick lit is hot, and vampires are hot, so both together ought to be DOUBLE HOT!, so publishers bought more.

I read Twilight (slogged through, more like), up through the scene with the vampire family playing baseball - at which point I snorfled tea through my nose and gave up.

I haven’t read the Twilight series. But I do know this, my 15 year old son read the first book and loved it. He is not a reader. He will read Darrin Shan and Stephen King. I could not get him interested in books until I found the Cirque du freak series by Shan.  I love any book series that can get my non-reading son eagerly reading books.

I have been avidly reading romances since age 12. I am also a geek. I watched the original Star Trek. Loved Star Wars when it came out. While I was loved The Lord of the Rings, I never became a fantasy fan because the stories lack romance and there were so few female leads in these stories.

I loved paranormal romance before it was popular. Nora Roberts had a few paranormal romances. Jayne Ann Krentz had paranormals. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. Then I read an online review of Bloody Bones. I read it and had to glom on the early books in the Anita Blake series. Narcissus in Chains killed the series for me, but it was fun while it lasted.

In general, I think that there is more fantasy in a variety of media. TV, movies, and books all have more fantasy and paranormal.

But slapping the “It’s the Sex, Stupid” label on the phenomenon is too simple, and falls into the old “Psh, it’s porn, that’s why they like it” dismissal that covers everything and explains very little.

My theory is: it’s also about women, and putting women in control, and how we’re still not comfortable enough to put it in real-life/realistic fiction terms yet.

Amen, sistah!

I read (and write) paranormal because they’re fun, different, and often intellectually-stimulating.  Of course, the physically-stimulating part is a huge draw, too! ;-)

Ooh, let’s show my age and take the video chain farther back!

Dark Shadows!  (Vampire Soap Opera, 1966)

Rumor has it Johnny Depp is planning to play Barnabas Collins in the movie remake! (Just when you thought Frank Langella was the most mezmerizing ever.) I don’t even LIKE vampires and I’ll pay to see THAT!

My theory is: it’s also about women, and putting women in control, and how we’re still not comfortable enough to put it in real-life/realistic fiction terms yet.

I just said this on the cover discussion over at Dear Author, but when are we going to see a female vampire sucking the neck of the hero? Isn’t that equivalent to woman-on-top?

I’ve noticed the paranormal heroines have a wider range, at least in the selection of the genre I’ve read so far.  Rarely is a female paranormal paired with an ordinary human, while the reverse seems to happen a lot more if the paranormal is male.  Perhaps there’s a conscious effort to make the woman physically equal to the man, by giving them both paranormal strength/ability?

THE VAMPIRE QUEEN’S SERVANT was one with a human male and vampire female—any other examples?

I haven’t read it, but does Mark of the Vampire Queen involve a vampire heroine and human hero?

The lack of a paranormal heroine/human hero coupling might be due to the idea that only a paranormal hero would be worthy (i.e., strong enough in all things) of a paranormal heroine. At first glance, this seems good, but upon further inspection it might rather be about the notion that female sexuality is such a potent thing that only a paranormal male could control/channel it.

I don’t think most women or men are comfortable thinking about women being physically stronger than all men—and heightened strength is often the case with paranormal anything. A lot of women would love to be physically stronger than men. . . just not the particular guy in one’s bed. I still think it’s an interesting direction Paranormal Romances could examine. J.R. Ward started to with Marissa and Butch in Lover Revealed, but then he was turned, so now they’re both vamps and that dynamic is moot.

Candy:

You’re right—the aggressive and powerful bit is what I wanted to express when I tacked on the phrase “warrior” to describe the prototypical paranormal romance heroine. Female warriors are in fairly short supply in other romance sub-genres. I think it does subvert the dominant paradigm (IM IN UR BKS SUBVERTING UR DOMINENT PARADIME) in a lot of ways, but as with most things pop culture, there are bits that fall in line with the paradigm, too.

OMG, I love that LOLCAT capshun. It pretty much covers my whole Danger Gal blog, but I usually concentrate on profiling heroines in Science Fiction (and Science Fiction Romance) who subvert those stereotypes. I’ve been looking for a few good Paranormal Heroines to profile, and will likely be checking out some Kresley Cole novels. Always looking for suggestions…

I guess I’ve never spent time really analyzing why I like the books I do…  I can say that it’s not really the heroines being kick-ass or otherwise that attract me.  I prefer romance in any story that I read because I am drawn to reading about the complexities of relationships and how two people grow together to become a unit.  Because of that I tend to not be interested in any straight genre like just Fantasy instead of romantic-Fantasy or whatever it would be called… 

I glom on vampire stories because vampires have always fascinated me.  I will admit that I toss a lot of the books that I read about them because they are too melodramatic and broody or too alpha and obsessive.  I love paranormals because mythology was what got me interested in reading something other than Romance.  The thought of Greek/Roman Gods and mythical beings has always excited me.  The fact that similar beings are found in practically every culture has always made me wonder.  Something about the mysterious otherworldly heros just does it for me.

Also, someone mentioned the ick factor in drinking blood being considered a sexy thing.  For me it’s not something that I pause and consider too much.  I don’t mind the biting thing because for me that’s erotic even with just a plain old human.  I think I look at the blood drinking thing as just a fact of their life.  My friend is vegan and she doesn’t dwell on the fact that I eat meat.  She knows it’s a fact of life for me so she just doesn’t spend too much time considering it. 

I don’t know… maybe I’m weird and don’t read books the same way everyone else does.  I’m the kind of person who doesn’t spend every second looking for hidden meanings or symbolism in most of the books I read (to the despair of my English teachers).  So I guess it’s easier for me to accept things as they are and not think about how if I were the one in that situation it would bother me.  Does that make sense or was it too rambley?

De-lurking to say… I’ve read well-written paranormal romance (Anne Rice), poorly-written paranormal romance (LKH), and VERY poorly-written paranormal romance (“Sunny”, anyone?  I’m surprised you haven’t reviewed her (?) novels, just for the sheer awfulness of copy-editing, dialogue, etc.  Wait - am I the only person who will admit she’s read/skimmed them?  Argh - outed!).  ....

The best sort-of-romance featuring a vampire I’ve ever read is Robin McKinley’s Sunshine.  But then, I’m a huge fan of all her work.  I guess I tend to seek out books by authors I like, rather than particular storylines I like. 

I do think it’s a challenge at this point to write a vampire in a way that isn’t completely stereotyped and laughable.  The thing that’s sexy about otherworldly heroes or anti-heroes is that they are a bit scary and dangerous.  So when they come with attributes like, say, hair down to their ankles, I’m not worried about them; I’m just… snickering.  I think the reader can tell when the author has bought into their own goth image too much, and takes themselves and their alter-ego too seriously, instead of actually trying to write the best story they can.

Jennifer Armintrout: Never read LJ Smith but am immediately adding her to my TBR pile, thank you…actually, looking at how big my TBR pile is, I may hate you. :)

Annette Curtis Klause: she was good. didn’t like Chocolate and Blood as much (should have bitten the jerk) but good.

I like shape-shifters a lot more than vampires. Probably cause I always wanted to be a shape-shifter (any shape, I’m not picky), whereas a vampire has eternal life and that’s about it on the pro side (and even that is iffy if you have friends/family you have to give up right away).

Well, if you considered witches as paranormal, you have witch heroines and human heroes (like NR’s ice/fire/earth trilogy). There’s also h/h who are different paranormals (werewolf and vampire, etc- ex: A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M Liu has female werewolf and male vampire and boy are there issues with that coupling).

An article called Twilight series brain candy as opposed to a weighty meal. Just thought that was a little funny. So much good YA out there, and yet the big-timers all kind of…well, just not that great.

But let me say, Twilight is a LOT better than Gossip Girls (another big hit). Bella may be TSTL and have a soon-to-be abusive boyfriend, but those girls…*shudder*

And to whoever mentioned it, I think there’s about 5% of heroes I would actually like to live with, and half of those are found in m/m books (meaning if fictional characters ever come to life, I still have a zero shot with them). :)

sorry, not 5%, more like 5! :) (And that’s out of the heroes I like, which is a small percentage of the books I’ve read)

Yes, agreed. I know of editors who buy books based on other books’ successes.  I see it as one book seeding a genre.  I.e., I suspect that we’ll look back in a few years and see Linnea Sinclair as a groundbreaking author in the Romance Science Fiction/Space Opera sub genre (if we don’t already).  It’s not to say that everyone after her is derivative, but that her success made a market possible.  I think one book can do that.

Jane

Thank you. It happens all the time in every kind of media and it’s hardly controversial to point it out.

I was bad today and skimmed over most of the comments, but I’m posting anyway, so sorry if I repeat…

I think a lot of it has to do with AIDS.  This thought has been in the back of my mind since reading an introduction to an erotica compilation, I think by Susie Bright (really not sure, but that sounds right?) back in 1999-2000.  Whoever it was talked about how as an editor of erotic anthologies she’d been seeing a lot more submissions to do with blood sports - cutting, knives, bleeding in erotic situations, and that she thought it might be connected to a deep fear/sense on the part of a lot of readers that sharing intimate fluids could result in contracting a (usually, and at that time much more so and more quickly) fatal disease for which there were treatments but no cure.

The idea of the essay was that this fear that was so intimately tied to sexuality eroticized the very aspects of the sexuality (blood, bodily fluids, wounds, death) that we were being encouraged by school and media to see as deadly.

I don’t think this accounts for the popularity of urban fantasy in general (which I, like other readers, came to more through Emma Bull, the Borderlands series, Charles DeLint, and the 1990s surge in fairy tale retellings).  And I think that the popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a huge factor (so many of the romance novel vampire treatments I read have the characters commenting on or referring to that show, so it was clearly a big part of the public consciousness in that area).

I dunno… I just have always found that essay coming to mind when I think about the popularity of vampire novels in particular.  Sorry I can’t think of where I read it.

My other big thought for the more butt-kicking side of the stories is that we live in a society that imposes a whole lot of requirements on us re: cooperation, submission to authority, modes of behavior, non-violence, etc.  Probably more so than in most time periods in history that I’ve read about.  I think that reading books full of strong women who solve problems through personal power (rather than through appeals to external strong people or a government or army or whatever) is cathartic to that side of me at least that empathizes with the desire for vigilante justice on offenders, while putting it in a fantasy context that lets it be easier separated from the behavior I’m socialized to condone in the real world.

I began to question what draws me to this genre. After all, would I really want a vampire husband? Would his courtly manners outweigh the fact that he’d never appreciate my cooking? That he could escape any argument by turning into a bat and flying out a window? That he’d upset the neighbors by mowing the lawn in the middle of the night?

Oh, I don’t know.  I’d give that a try, Mary Ann :)

Vampire AND slayer/police/PI/whatever as Kinky Sex Guy/Gal who is lottsa cruel and kinda uncaring/mean.  Yes, they’re working on the side of good, but seriously I don’t want them on my side.

Oddly enough, I was thinking of something similar to this at lunch today and I was thinking of sending Candy an email for her opinion about it. 

I like kick-ass heroines, I love vampires, and I love LOVE shapeshifters.  I’ve always loved me some vamps and shapeshifters (especially the shifters) even before the current glut of paranormal romance and I’ve seen just about every movie and tv show that features either or both.  That said, I’m currently reading an urban fantasy, complete with kick-ass heroine, vampires, shapeshifters, and magic.  Obviously, given my preferences, I should be loving this book and I’m just not.  A big part of that is that I simply don’t like the heroine very much and I have a hard time caring if she lives or dies a horrible death.  The heroine is so pointlessly rude and carelessly bitchy to everyone she comes up against, be they authority figure, potential suspect, or possible love interest.  (And I find myself thinking that the possible love interest must be the villain simply because I can’t think of any other reason he would want to be around someone so relentlessly unpleasant.)  I’m sorry, but if you were really so very confident, capable, dead-sexy, and simply deadly, would you really have to proclaim your bad-assness to all and sundry through your complete lack of manners and professional demeanor?  I mean, I like snark as much as anyone, but when the heroine acts like an immature, sullen twat in every interaction, it just doesn’t read as “kick-ass” to me—it reads as “obnoxious, insecure bitch”.  I’ve seen this far too often in recent releases in the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal genre and I suspect that it’s a case of “my girl has to be more kick-ass than all other kick-ass girls so she must be more junkyard-dog-mean than all other kick-ass girls”.  Meanwhile, in my mind, I’ve always figured that if you really are that confidently deadly, you don’t feel the need to verbally abuse everyone around you.  Given that, it makes it hard for me to read that character for any length of time, let alone care what happens to her.

Edward is not a stalker.  Okaaaaaay, maybe he is a little.  lol But if we had to cut out unhealthily obsessed heroes, we’d loose at least 80% of all paranormal romances.  Personally, I think that Edward’s biggest problem is that he’s always right, or he always thinks he is, which is really annoying.

Of course, I’m not counting her [Anne Rice’s] pseudonyms and the erotica books.

Oh, but I think you have to. They’re all part of her work.

I am not a big fan of vampire books, but I love, Love, LOVE paranormal/urban fantasy/science fiction/epic fantasy—all that stuff, especially when mixed with romance. I fell in love with fantasy and science fiction first. When I was young enough I still thought kissing was icky. I was married with kids before I discovered romance and glommed onto all its sub-genres. And the fantasy/ paranormal ones were always my favorites. Except for vampires. I just really never could get into vampires.

Unless you write a really good vampire. And there are some really, really good vampire writers out there. I like LKH. Even her latest books. I’m a little worried about the new one due out in June, but I’m still going to give it a whirl. (The serial killer crime with the dead girl in the pit was worked through to the end—but the bad guys did get away, so it wasn’t resolved as well as one might like. Don’t like it when she saves bad guys to bring back in later stories.) I also like J.R. Ward. And Lynn Viehl. I like Kim Harrison, have THE OUTLAW DEMON WAILS on my TBR shelf, but I’m a little afraid to read it because she really gets into torturing her characters and I have to be ready for all that anguish.

On the other hand, I’ve never been able to get through a Feehan, and I can take or leave Adrian. The one I read was okay, but it didn’t inspire me to snabble up the rest of them. MJDavidson is like cotton candy. It’s big and fluffy and sweet when you put it in your mouth, but then it instantly melts away to not much.

So. I prefer my paranormal/SF/Fantasy romance without vampires, thank you, but I’ll read them if they’re really, really good. On the other hand, I read the stories for the story, not the hot sex. Although if the hot nooky is really good, and it fits the flow and the pace and needs of the story, all the better. Some stories, I find myself skipping the sex. (This is not limited to paranormal romance. I skip most of the love scenes in the few Stephanie Laurens books I read too…)

Hey, Quercus, thanks for mentioning Sunshine.  That’s one vampire love story that really got to me.  Like you, I’ve never met a Robin McKinley book that I didn’t like, and she managed to make it work for me.

The heroine is so pointlessly rude and carelessly bitchy to everyone she comes up against, be they authority figure, potential suspect, or possible love interest.  (And I find myself thinking that the possible love interest must be the villain simply because I can’t think of any other reason he would want to be around someone so relentlessly unpleasant.) I’m sorry, but if you were really so very confident, capable, dead-sexy, and simply deadly, would you really have to proclaim your bad-assness to all and sundry through your complete lack of manners and professional demeanor?

OH MY GOD, ME TOO! That really deserves allcaps. So many of these heroines are just complete jerks. They’re rude to everyone, always have to be right, don’t listen, don’t compromise, and in fact are often bullies. At the end of such a book, if I can make it that far, I desperately want the villains to win and the heroine to die a fiery death. Never happens, of course. So I avoid those books now like the plague.

That’s actually my problem with Anita Blake. She’s a jerk. Or at least she was back when I was reading the books. Maybe she’s changed now, who knows. But when I read her, she was so unpleasant, so mean, so rude, and so hypocritical and cruel that I just PRAYED for the author to kill her. The sex isn’t why I dropped the series (although the sex is bad, IMO). It was the characterization of the heroine.

Also, this whole “What brought about this booming subgenre?” discussion makes me think of The Tipping Point. Anybody read it? I think the reason paranormal romances are now huge is due to many little factors that slowly merged into a big boom. Like so many things, it can’t be nailed down just to one or two influences. Even if those influences made the NYT bestseller list.

This also underpins how women are frequently allowed moral victories in romance novels (and genre fiction in general), but they’re rarely allowed competitive victories.

This is similar to a class I’m taking called Violent Women (it has a longer title but that is so much more cool), where we study violent women in film and TV shows. We’ve been talking about how all the violent women- in comparison to men- have to be justified in their violence, morally. Even when it’s revenge, it’s revenge we are rooting for.

Can’t think enough to expand on a topic I’ve been talking about for 7 weeks…brain hurts…tired…zzzz….

Just to throw my two cents in here (or bob since I’m not actually in the U.S. lol):

I remember being introduced to the Fantasy Genre through tons of Hippo Fantasy and Point Horror books (well kind of after Grimms). I always think it’s a whole generation of girls who have grown up with semi understanding the suppressed eroticism in these books and channeling it into something more fulfilling. And something where we say ‘hey Vampire dude the biology of blood transfusion can totally be made up so come on over. I want me some illicit Vampire loving.’ Here, women are in control of themselves, especially with Vampire novels where they seem to be more comedy than dark or dangerous (but please excuse me if I’m wrong! My knowledge of the genre is more gleaned than extensive!). 

Also I remember reading tons of Buffy novels from the T.V. series which my mum wouldn’t let me watch and I definitely, definitely noticed a trend around 2000 when all these paranormal novels popped up with awful, awful ‘sassy’ buffyesque heroines that after about the age of 13 you want to throttle. So i think it’s directly related to that too (the T.V series that is.) Anne Rice, although has been around a lot longer didn’t do what Buffy did for the modern Vampire novel. Or at least the Vampire Romance novel. I really can’t see the true Darkness found in Rice evident anywhere else in the romance world. Although I think it would be great!

In literature the Magic Realism of Rushdie and specifically of Angela Carter who reconstructed a lot of fairy tales to give feminist out comes really made an impression on the literati. Which I think influenced the publishers (also literati perhaps!) in to picking up more books related to this. The Bloody Chamber and I think Company of Wolves the movie is all about Carter’s work regarding this.

Perhaps also we, as the novel reading world, were ready for a non-sixties family set-up. Where the dark, not talked of ‘other’ that has been cast as at the very least ‘loners’ are bought out for reassessment and understanding. Perhaps the paranormal novel is a bit of an extreme version but still related I think. Somewhere that draws parallels with our darker desires something that isn’t the comedic dysfunction of a Caucasian, middle class, honey-i’m-home-generic. Sadly I can’t watch the Flintstones anymore which is such a shame because I LOVED them. 

Personally I love paranormal romance but I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for in the Romance genre. I loved the Tamora Pierce books and OMG how could I forget! Charmed was also a landmark. Such a big influence on a lot of novels. It allowed a real resurgence of Wicca along with Buffy.

Sorry! rather a rambly two bob!

cOcO

Needs57 - lol- Yes Please, I needs me some great paranormals!

Yes, agree that LKH kicked off the trend not by being the first, especially since I first read the same type of story when it was written by Mercedes Lackey and the heroine was named Diana Tregarde.

But the success of the LKH series opened the market door to books in that genre—NYC publishers saw a market and started grabbing stuff the audience might buy. Trivia: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books were inspired by LKH. He was a big fun up to…oh, book 10, I think. He used to frequent the old LKH yahoo list back in the day.

On Twilight: my teenage daughters reads them and loves them. And she gets the fact that Edward is ill-behaved and stalkery and that’s not a good thing, and that’s why Bella should be wary of him. I think there’s some nuance there that can actually teach girls that ‘no, this is not the way a proper boyfriend should behave.’ But Edward is safe, because he’s fictional. Note: I have also learned the best way to drive her crazy is to call Edward ‘emo.’

Eileen Dreyer had a theory about the rise of paranormal romance in the last few years. Not only that the women were allowed to be in charge and powerful.

She thought it was more primal than that. It went something like this:
The world is an incredibly horrifying, scary place right now. And the way women are coping is taking their deepest, darkest fears, all the things that go bump in the night, out of the closet, wrestling with them, defeating them, and sometimes turning them into creatures of the light. It’s part of the deep desire right now to take this horrible chaos and put it in order.
(I think that’s how it went. She explained at the bar at RWA Nat’l in Dallas. And I’d had a few drinks at the time.)

Jennifer Armintrout made me come out of lurkdom by invoking L.J. Smith. I’m always so excited to meet fellow former fans. I loved her books before I had ever heard of LKH. That’s what got me hooked on paranormal/vampire romance. I think it was the whole fantasy/epic/forever/gothic sense that hooked me as an impressionable teen (actually, more like 12 years old) in the mid-1990’s.

L.J. Smith sadly fell off the face of the earth 10 years ago, but has recently resurfaced—with a website and everything—and is supposedly writing again. I can only hope she doesn’t pull an LKH and the wait is worth it.

Yay! Somebody else who loves Tamora Pierce : )

I ws just thinking I should stick her in here as someone who has been writing great YA fantasy for years. Her heroines are always strong women who excel in male fields/uniquely gifted. I think the reason I love her so much is her women are always strong, but never rude or annoying. I read her as soon as she comes out. The Protector of the Small series is my fav.

Also, a shout-out to Charmed. Those women were strong and able to take care of business without being completely arrogant bitches (with some exceptions, they could be ragey bitches if they wanted to).  Although sometime they fell into the whiney trap, mostly it was about them dealing with things using their own power.

Wonderful ; )

Jennifer Armintrout made me come out of lurkdom by invoking L.J. Smith.

Darn, I missed that comment!  Yes, the LJ Smith books are a gazillion times better than Twilight, but I’m a total fangrl when it comes to LJS.  I wouldn’t say the heroes are any less pyschostalker than in any other vamp rom, tho.  Look at The Vampire Diaries—the main character, Elena, had practically every male in that book chasing after her like they were rabid dogs!  Fortunately, the intrepid vampire hero turned out to be the dog with the biggest teeth.

Patricia Briggs is currently my favourite ‘paranormal’ author, but I admit to knowing the exact release date of the next Anita Blake. I got suckered (uh, sorry) into the whole vampire thing when I read Interview with a Vampire in year 8. It was the first book I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading (a la Julie Burchill’s intro to Valley of the Dolls) and I’ve had a thing for vampires ever since. The genre’s popularity definitely owes something to the illicit nature of sexualized blood-letting/violence (especially as it goes against both Judeo-Christian AND feminist mores…)

However, I was dragged into being a LKH fan pretty much against my own will (I was trapped working a second-hand bookstore till 9 every friday night for two years. I did/read a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise). But she’s always been a terrible writer, so I’m pretty at peace with the fact that she’s never gonna be the sort of author who gets that their characters are characters and not people they’re in love with. Since she isn’t that sort of author, however, it’d be nice if she’d stop over-populating her books with increasingly ludicrous secondary characters since we’re all painfully aware that they won’t have the decency to get themselves shot.

I don’t mind Stephenie Meyer, as far as blandly written, wildly unsatisfying books go. But there is something, if not actively harmful, at least icky in the fact that in both the Twilight series and The Host the emotional arc hinges on the intense uncontrollable emotion of male romantic interests who are lent explicit narrative permission to express that emotion violently, in a manner that almost always involves the body of the female lead.  I mean—Bella spends three books getting grabbed, carried away against her will, almost eaten etc because Edward and Jacob are overly titillated by how things smell. The Host‘s main character seems to nothing *but* get beat-up for antagonizing men by her mere presence.

Actually, I think that probably qualifies as more than just icky.

Candy:

I wonder if the flip-flop is due to lazy characterization, or if it’s
liberating because it’s a sign that women are finally allowed to be
assholes AND protagonists (instead having the asshole females relegated to villainess status, as has been the case in the past). Maybe a bit of both?

There’s the asshole villainess and then there’s the martyr heroine. I’d rather read about an asshole heroine than a martyr heroine who spends the entire book on her pedestal patiently waiting for the hero to come to his senses and grovel for forgiveness.

Late to the party, but how disappointing! I usually enjoy PZ, but his ignorance is showing, as is the ignorance of (I’m guessing) a mostly SF reading crowd.

The confluence of paranormal romance, vampire books, and urban fantasy is rampant these days, but I think it’s a “perfect storm” situation. Each has their own inspiration, whether it’s Ann Rice, Dracula, female empowerment from Buffy et al. (I’ll attribute the rise of the kick ass female urban fantasy thing to Buffy, and the rise of the paranormal romance to the fact that regular contemporaries are too PC to get into the caveman-alpha tactics most para romance heroes employ). Most popular para romance authors who have been in the field for a long time can tell you how they labored in obscurity for years, because the romance market was not interested in paranormal topics. Angela Knight pubbed with small presses, Christine Feehan was a pioneer in that respect.

And as for the Harlequin/ice cream thing—I absolutely agree. In fact, I even blogged about the phenomenon several months ago:

http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/2007/01/05/a-new-counter-meme/

[Yay! Somebody else who loves Tamora Pierce : )

I ws just thinking I should stick her in here as someone who has been writing great YA fantasy for years. Her heroines are always strong women who excel in male fields/uniquely gifted. I think the reason I love her so much is her women are always strong, but never rude or annoying. I read her as soon as she comes out. The Protector of the Small series is my fav.

Anj, her Tortall books are my fav! I have the most amazing memories of reading them in the summer. I loved the romance and the atmosphere, the training, the relationships and even the cross dressing. She actually went into proper detail about a woman’s obstacles when fighting; periods, muscles in awkward places and of course the cross dressing angst and everything!
Although her latest Tortall books are a little cringe worthy. I remember in one this bird is picking at Ali’s chest for some goodness knows what reason and she says something like ‘oooh stop that I don’t even let boys of my own species do that.’ Eww. Crossed some wierd animal/human boundary thing for me. Even though perhaps the ending explains it a bit better.

Also, a shout-out to Charmed. Those women were strong and able to take care of business without being completely arrogant bitches (with some exceptions, they could be ragey bitches if they wanted to.)

Woo Charmed! They are ass kickingly good. Although the Harry Potter Magic school thing they pulled was like NOOO! Crazy. I loved all the potions and lotions making! Soo cool. And they were ridiculously easy in true long running T.V. series style! Which was highly enjoyable to watch.

I really think this was waiting to happen. It’s like for about 40 years we were exploring this occult stuff from i Dream of Genie to Bella’s Dracula and suddenly a cool new interpretation suddenly bust on to the page. A whole generation worth of lots of intertextual paranormal fun! I think a lot of people were writing the same thing at the same time. So I agree totally that if LKH had been a janitor then we would still have this new craze.

coco

Also I do remember growing up that even Sweet Valley High had a Vampire novelette. I swear Jess was kidnapped and forced to live with some dark and dangerous (and probs actually more Campire than Vampire dude with all that green velvet) Vampire and Elizabeth rescued her. Only SVH I ever read. So tortured.

Coco

I commented early in this thread and have been reading all the comments since. And now I’m trying to figure out why, when I was such a big fan before, that I am so over it now when so many others are still very excited about the genre.
I guess it boils down to two things, letting my dissatisfaction with certain authors leave a bad taste in my mouth for the whole genre and the fact that I’ve never liked what’s popular. I got turned off on certain paranormal and paranormal romance authors that had personally jumped the shark (LKH and Sherilyn Kenyon being to main two among others for me ) so that soured me to the whole genre for the most part. Also I am very much the rebel and lover of the underdog, always have been, and even as a middle aged mom I get very leery of anything that’s too popular. The bigger and more mainstream paranormal gets the more reluctant I am to call myself a fan.
Honestly I’m shocked how popular it still seems to be but I guess that’s great since I have many friends writing in that genre.

Because this exact sort of behavior from heroes was what caught my attention when I first started reading romance when I was a wee ‘un, and it both infuriated me and made me horribly uncomfortable. I wonder if the flip-flop is due to lazy characterization, or if it’s liberating because it’s a sign that women are finally allowed to be assholes AND protagonists (instead having the asshole females relegated to villainess status, as has been the case in the past). Maybe a bit of both?

I personally cannot stand the mean, bullying, rude, insensitive, uncompromising alpha male heroes either. I can’t finish a book if such a hero is in it. It’s just too much. Most recently I tried to read a Judith Ivory novel where the hero gleefully kidnaps the heroine and holds her against her will, and then gets her pregnant, and is just thrilled that she’s pregnant because now he OWNS HER. Ugh. I gave up right in the middle and will prolly never finish it. But, different strokes for different folks.

At first the rude, bitchy heroine was refreshing and delightful, what a nice change! But it got old quick. You’re right though, maybe the abundance of jerky heroines is a result of wanting women to be able to be just as rude and unlikable as men, not always having to be nice and passive and sweet and “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Also I do remember growing up that even Sweet Valley High had a Vampire novelette. I swear Jess was kidnapped and forced to live with some dark and dangerous (and probs actually more Campire than Vampire dude with all that green velvet) Vampire and Elizabeth rescued her. Only SVH I ever read. So tortured.

Sweet Valley High! Sigh… I grew up on Christopher Pike and RL Stine and Caroline B. Cooney, et al, and they hugely influenced me. As well as Stephen King and Dean Koontz. But I think a lot of people grew up with those teen horror novels, wonderful pulp fun, and I think maybe so many of us having read that sort of thing and being surrounded by that genre (horror movies, horror novels, TV shows) made the paranormal romance a logical continuation. Vampires and werewolves are not new, kick-ass heroines are not new, and thrills and chills are not new. The only thing that’s new, I guess, is the name and the marketing. Maybe.

Fascinating. Because this exact sort of behavior from heroes was what caught my attention when I first started reading romance when I was a wee ‘un, and it both infuriated me and made me horribly uncomfortable. I wonder if the flip-flop is due to lazy characterization, or if it’s liberating because it’s a sign that women are finally allowed to be assholes AND protagonists (instead having the asshole females relegated to villainess status, as has been the case in the past). Maybe a bit of both?

It could be a bit of both, I guess.  And perhaps I’m culturally conditioned to want the heroine’s bad behavior to be morally justified.  Thing is, I don’t like it when the hero acts like an unrelenting jerk, either.  Or, to be more exact, if either the hero or the heroine acts this way, I want to know why.  Did they have deeply emotionally scarring childhood or were they subjected to some other major trauma?  If so, let me know or at least drop some hints, because constant nastiness directed at everyone that the hero/heroine comes across, with no indication why they are acting that way or why anyone would put up with them for any length of time, does nothing but make me dislike them intensely.  Even then, I’m of the belief that past trauma only excuses so much because, at some point, a person has to take responsibility of his/her own behavior and how they treat people (as opposed to making their issues everyone else’s problems).  Still, I’ll excuse a lot if I know that certain behavior is a mask for insecurity or a way of buffering the character from more hurt.  I’ve read many books where the heroine is not particularly likeable, but the characterization was so skillfully done, I found them sympathetic and I cared what happened to them.  This is not the case in the book I’m currently reading and in a few others I’ve picked up recently.  There’s a certain fairly new (and somewhat popular) urban fantasy/alternative universe series that I don’t read anymore because I wanted to throttle the heroine for her treatment of the hero—treatment that was still just bitchy in the second book even though the end of the first book supposedly wrapped up the emotional conflict between the two of them.  It’s the continual “act like a bitch and justify it because hero isn’t worthy because he’s not human/realize hero may not be entirely human but has feelings too and feel remorse/realize and declare own feelings/act like a bitch and justify it because hero isn’t worthy because he’s not human” cycle that ticked me off about Buffy/Spike and Anita Blake/nearly every guy she has contact with for more than a 1/2 day in the last 5-6 books.  The Buffy/Spike relationship was finally dealt with somewhat and resolved, but if anything has frustrated me about the Anita Blake books more than anything else is the lack of any real resolution or emotional growth in any of Anita’s relationships.  At some point in a series, shouldn’t some of the emotional issues reach some resolution? 

That said, the book I’m currently reading is a first in what appears to be a series and I’m only halfway through, so I’ll finish it and see if the characters are fleshed out a bit more by the end.  Perhaps she has reasons why she acts snotty and unprofessional to everyone.

Wandering more off topic, but the heroine being unbelieveable awful to the hero was the reason I stopped being able to stomache Stephanie Plum novels.
I adored Morelli and the way Stephanie continued to treat him was just awful to me. I’ll admit I stopped at about book 7, so I’m a few behind now, but I decided that I would stop reading until Stephanie and Joe get hitched (or HEA).

But ultimately I agree with Tina C. I’m okay with the hero/heroine acting awful as long as there are issues to back it up and growth away from awful.

“I remember in the 1997-1998 my two favorite shows were Buffy the Vampire Slayer and La Femme Nikita. So Buffy and Nikita perfectly melded my wanting to be an attractive kick ass woman (as the feminist that I am) and totally escapist as I was dealing with heavy shit in my life.

Who doesnt want to be a woman that can kick demon behind or put down a terrorist plot while looking super cute wearing designer clothes, lipgloss and heels and have time to have a steamy relationship with a tall dark and sexy man?  You dont have to appear weaker to be with this man. You dont have to give up your sex appeal to be strong and you dont have to be stupid either.  You can be a kick ass chick because he’s a super strong sexy killer in his own right. Its the ultimate wish fulfillment for a modern woman.”

THis about sums up why I read paranormal books..looks good, kicks but and has hottie waiting in the wings.

The first vampire romances I ever read were Obsession, Possession, and Confession by Lori Herter in the early 90’s. This was back when I would read any book in a language I could understand as long as it had vampires in it, including How to Become a Vampire in Six Easy Lessons by Madeline X.

That said, I remember Herter’s books as being fairly decent as far as romance novels go (not one of my favorite genres anyway). The sex was a bit silly. The female vampires were basically the “typical” man’s dream: didn’t require any foreplay and liked sex rough. I don’t recall anyone ripping anyone’s throat out though.

Now that vampire novels of all kinds are so ubiquitous (and now that I’m no longer completely obsessed by vampires) I am a lot more picky. I’m sure there are good vampire romances out there, I just haven’t gotten around to reading them.

Well, that wall of paranormals at Wal-Mart’s includes mine, Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, with the appropriate neck-sucking cover.  If the prof had looked a little closer, he might have seen that the books between these covers include quite a range of fiction, from things that are closer to traditional horror to urban fantasy to mystery to sci-fi to romance to comedy.  (Mine is a comedy.)

My paranormal influences aren’t Anne Rice or LKH (can’t read either of them) but shows like “The X-Files” and “Buffy” and now “Dr. Who” and “Torchwood.”  These are character-driven stories and so is much of the current paranormal fiction out there.  I could be wrong, but I think women tend to like character-driven stories.

The covers are all the same regardless of the content though.  Kind of like the high-kicking girl who is used to sell a variety of things.

My code:  cent83, so I still owe cent81.

I’ve been looking for good fantasy novels for years—ever since Robin McKinley’s “Beauty” first came out.  Before that I read the kid’s stuff as well as Tolkien.  But most of the fantasy I came across was very male fantasy “boobs & wizards” stuff or the epic young male protagonist quest novels.  As a young female I got bored with what was available to me.  The female characters were either ciphers or existed solely to provide sex or be rescued by the male characters.

When all the good paranormal stuff started coming out, I loved it!  Finally I found some strong women characters who were the stars of the show.  Now the genre is clogged with a lot of junk, but there is still good authors and books to find out there.  So, I’m happy…

2 reasons why I think vampire novels (and other paranormals) are popular with women:

1)  The women are strong!  They take action, kick ass, and make choices for them.  They’re usually not too neurotic (except for Anita of course.)  I can identify with them.
2)  Vampires usually “fall in love forever”.  They are faithful after they meet their special someone.  With over 50% of marriages failing now, I like my fantasies to have happy endings.