Just how romantic is paranormal romance anyway?
I did a post about the paranormal romance v. urban fantasy issue over at Ripping Ozzie Reads. I'm still mulling the issue over, though. Obviously it's just a label, and labels shouldn't matter - except of course that in the world of buying books and selling books and promoting books, they kind of do. Many readers resent the appropriation of the phrase "urban fantasy" to describe the worlds of hot fighty women in leather pants. (Hot slayer women in leather pants sadly has not yet caught on as an alternative name for the sub-genre). Paranormal romance carries with it the dual problem that 'romance' carries something of a stigma for many non-romance readers, particularly of the male variety, and implies a certain responsibility on the part of the book to be... well... romantic.
Call me crazy, but I never actually saw the appeal of walking dead men or the terminally hairy anyway. The only way to make them remotely attractive is to emphasise their humanness at the expense of their monstrousness... or to give them a sense of humour. Maybe that's just me.
[Urban Fantasy - taking the romance out of paranormal, one dead bloke at a time...]
Many of the Leather Trouser Urban Fantasties (LTUF) involve love stories, and almost all of them have middling to high smut levels (hooray!) but they are so far removed from the traditional idea of romance that the title can certainly be considered misleading. The main issue is the HEA (Happy Ever After) which is most definitely not a characteristic of many LTUFs. The stories mostly take place in a noirish world, with "kick arse" female protagonists taking the place of the crag-faced detective, and leaving the men in her life to take the role of femme fatale.
I do think the big appeal of urban fantasy to the female reader is the inversion of gender. The women in these books are not fairy princesses, and though many of the books emphasise the heroine's traditional femininity along with their less traditional demonstrations of female strength (we always know every item of clothing Anita Blake is wearing and what shade of lipstick, as well as which gun she is packing and where/how she is concealing it... meanwhile, a commenter over at ROR made some alarming allegations about Prada handbags in pararnomal romances which I may yet have to investigate). Still, the women of LTUF are often gender non-conformists in true noir hero fashion - they may have more than one romantic/sexual interest and even have sex (gasp!) with more than one character, they are often respected by men in fields such as law enforcement, and they are often the most powerful person in the room.
Commonly the paranormal protag's love interest/s are dangerous in different ways to her - vampires, werethings (why stop at wolves?), demons, assassins and rogue cops. This allows them to be 'alpha' without weakening her position as main character and superfemale. Often she is top of one field/clan and he of another, and the overwhelming pattern of relationships in paranormal stories is that of equality. Weird, screwed up equality. Also if her lover is a monster, then she can be the tamer of monsters, which is a very powerful trope. Buffy's need to have "some monster in her man" was a regular theme, for instance - I know *I* always lost interest when they were pairing her up with someone human. (possibly because they were still trying to make her love interests Manly - I would have adored it if Buffy went for some human geek love...)
While I'm all for equality, what I wanted to play with in the world of Siren Beat was the idea of creating a male foil for Nancy Napoleon who was sexy and yet subordinate. Nick Cadmus is powerful in different ways to Nancy, but he is younger and more headstrong than she is - his impulses get him into trouble and while he is a damned good soldier at her back, putting him in charge of anything would be a very bad idea. He's prone to being seduced and - oh, yes. He's the one who has to be rescued, more than once.
Also, he's not a vampire or a werewolf. He's a sea-pony.
I'll be interested to see whether readers think a "weaker link" beta hero paired with an alpha heroine can still be hot, or if he's just not alpha enough for some tastes - especially as I am sort of planning to bring these characters back at book length...
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You can still purchase Siren Beat here for a mere $12/$15 depending on which part of the world you live in. Oh, and pre-purchase customers should be getting their copies this week, wheeeee!
Call me crazy, but I never actually saw the appeal of walking dead men or the terminally hairy anyway. The only way to make them remotely attractive is to emphasise their humanness at the expense of their monstrousness... or to give them a sense of humour. Maybe that's just me.
[Urban Fantasy - taking the romance out of paranormal, one dead bloke at a time...]
Many of the Leather Trouser Urban Fantasties (LTUF) involve love stories, and almost all of them have middling to high smut levels (hooray!) but they are so far removed from the traditional idea of romance that the title can certainly be considered misleading. The main issue is the HEA (Happy Ever After) which is most definitely not a characteristic of many LTUFs. The stories mostly take place in a noirish world, with "kick arse" female protagonists taking the place of the crag-faced detective, and leaving the men in her life to take the role of femme fatale.
I do think the big appeal of urban fantasy to the female reader is the inversion of gender. The women in these books are not fairy princesses, and though many of the books emphasise the heroine's traditional femininity along with their less traditional demonstrations of female strength (we always know every item of clothing Anita Blake is wearing and what shade of lipstick, as well as which gun she is packing and where/how she is concealing it... meanwhile, a commenter over at ROR made some alarming allegations about Prada handbags in pararnomal romances which I may yet have to investigate). Still, the women of LTUF are often gender non-conformists in true noir hero fashion - they may have more than one romantic/sexual interest and even have sex (gasp!) with more than one character, they are often respected by men in fields such as law enforcement, and they are often the most powerful person in the room.
Commonly the paranormal protag's love interest/s are dangerous in different ways to her - vampires, werethings (why stop at wolves?), demons, assassins and rogue cops. This allows them to be 'alpha' without weakening her position as main character and superfemale. Often she is top of one field/clan and he of another, and the overwhelming pattern of relationships in paranormal stories is that of equality. Weird, screwed up equality. Also if her lover is a monster, then she can be the tamer of monsters, which is a very powerful trope. Buffy's need to have "some monster in her man" was a regular theme, for instance - I know *I* always lost interest when they were pairing her up with someone human. (possibly because they were still trying to make her love interests Manly - I would have adored it if Buffy went for some human geek love...)
While I'm all for equality, what I wanted to play with in the world of Siren Beat was the idea of creating a male foil for Nancy Napoleon who was sexy and yet subordinate. Nick Cadmus is powerful in different ways to Nancy, but he is younger and more headstrong than she is - his impulses get him into trouble and while he is a damned good soldier at her back, putting him in charge of anything would be a very bad idea. He's prone to being seduced and - oh, yes. He's the one who has to be rescued, more than once.
Also, he's not a vampire or a werewolf. He's a sea-pony.
I'll be interested to see whether readers think a "weaker link" beta hero paired with an alpha heroine can still be hot, or if he's just not alpha enough for some tastes - especially as I am sort of planning to bring these characters back at book length...
===
You can still purchase Siren Beat here for a mere $12/$15 depending on which part of the world you live in. Oh, and pre-purchase customers should be getting their copies this week, wheeeee!