When a certain notorious biology professor from Minnesota notices the massive wall o’ befanged man-titty adorning his local Wal-Mart, and finds it notable enough to blog about. Poor PZ. I can only pity his eyeballs. I don’t know if this is a sign that paranormal romances have finally hit the big time, or whether they’ve jumped the shark.
It’s always interesting to pop outside the romance community and see how people outside of it perceive the genre. Do I have thoughts on that? Boy howdy do I ever.
Some of the people sniping at Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series as being equivalent to Harry Potter for angsty teenyboppers except not particularly well-written made me stop and go: “Wait, Harry Potter was well-written?” (This is clearly because I am such a superior reader with superior tastes in all my literature, and anyone who thinks Harry Potter is awesome is wrong. And stupid. And racist. And a killer of puppies. Just so we’re clear about where I come from when I make statements of aesthetic judgment.) My pointless and incredibly silly snobbery when it comes to children’s and YA fiction aside, what struck me about some of the comments in Pharyngula that dealt with Twilight was the offhand dismissal of the series, not merely because they weren’t especially well-written (I myself couldn’t finish Twilight, and in that regard I’m totally in agreement that it’s the Harry Potter of vampire teenyboppers), but because they were obviously written for a teenage female audience in mind. There’s much casual contempt for literature that deals with the emotional and the female, and I see it as a logical extension from a culture that devalues female experiences in general; that teenage female romantic experiences in particular are singled out as being especially frivolous and assumed to be Not Worthy of Serious Thought isn’t anything new, but it still chafes at me when I see it pop up.
I am also fascinated—FASCINATED—that Harlequin has become shorthand for romance, all romance, the way it has, since books published under the Harlequin/Silhouette imprint cover only a very specific niche of romance. It’d be as if, in attempting to define ice-cream, somebody didn’t address the ingredients, or the characteristics that make ice-cream, well, icy and creamy, but instead chose to refer to it solely by a rather slapdash association of flavor and brand name, sometimes resulting in rather jarring juxtapositions if you know ice-cream well. “My mom’s a huge fan of Breyer’s Phish Food, but I just don’t get it—the thought of eating bits of unbaked chocolate chip cookie dough in ice-cream makes me want to hurl,” sez somebody, and it’s all I can do to not leap up like an obnoxious bastard and say “DUDE, Phish Food is Ben and Jerry’s, and for the love of God, it doesn’t have chocolate chip cookie dough anywhere in it, and really, YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T EAT ICE-CREAM AND THEREFORE ARE UNQUALIFIED TO COMMENT ON WHAT WE’RE EATING, AND I’M GOING TO JUMP ON YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOUR NEXT COMMENT IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE HOW EVERYONE WHO EATS ICE-CREAM IS A FAT WHORE. SEE HOW I’M JUMPING ON YOUR HEAD? JUMP. JUMMMMMP.”
Right. Now that I’m thoroughly craving Phish Food (AND have successfully squelched my desire to act like an obnoxious bastard on somebody else’s comment board—at least this time): PZ’s question at the end intrigues me. Where DID this surge come from?Because people attributing the surge to Twilight are wrong. Twilight hit just as vampires and paranormal romance were huge and getting even bigger. JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood had hit the scene like a hundred-khilitohn bhomb the September previous to Twilight‘s publication. I’m not necessarily interested in tracing the whole trajectory to its source, because I think the current paranormal romance scene is not a direct reaction to, say, the disturbing eroticism of Dracula—I think Anne Rice’s novels are a better candidate for that.
Personally, I think the current paranormal romance boom is the direct descendant of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, which is more urban fantasy than a creature driven by older, more Victorian mythologies and sensibilities.
Regardless of what the Anita Blake series has become, and regardless what people may think, the popularity of the books and its unholy progeny is due to more than the thrill of reading taboo-busting inter-species nookie; somebody in the comments quoted a Powell’s Books employee defining the genre as “women committing every imaginable act of lust and perversion with vampires, werewolves, demons, Lovecraftian tentacled rape gods, basically anything you can imagine as long as it’s not a normal human man”—which made me go HAAAA, but also made me go “Oh, come ON, judging all of paranormal romance just because you were forced to page through the Merry Gentry series is hardly fair. I mean, taboo-busting inter-species nookie is pretty hot and definitely a factor in the popularity—and really, God bless our prurient motivations, because so much brilliant art would have gone (and continue to go) unexpressed if it weren’t for horny artists sublimating their unspeakable urges in beautiful ways, and I really don’t see any inherent wrongness in reading something to get your rocks off (but oh God that’s another topic for another time). 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.
The surge of demand for women in a dominant role—as pursuers and protectors and warriors—has been a long time coming, and I think it says something interesting about us and our level of comfort with and/or inability to suspend disbelief about women owning a certain sort of cultural power that most of the asskicking happens in Not Quite Earth, and that many of the heroines are Not Quite Human. The current crop of paranormal romances owe a lot to Anita Blake, but they owe much to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too.
And now I’ve pretty much reached the extent of my over-thinking about this particular bit of romance, it’s your turn: feel free to overthink paranormal romances in the comments. Or, you know, don’t. Do you read it mostly—even solely—for the hot sex and because you have a hard-on for angsty immortals? Sing it loud, and sing it proud.
Is this blue rectangle the ballot box? Okay, here’s my vote.
NO.
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.
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 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!
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:
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 😀
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 😀
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 Honeyâ€. 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.
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.
Oooh, good book! Didn’t she write a werewolf one, too?
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.
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 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.
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!
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 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:
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)
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.
Oh, I don’t know. I’d give that a try, Mary Ann 🙂
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.