What is romantic fiction, anyway?

That's the title of the author panel--yes, author panel--I'm on at the RNA conference this weekend. And, you know, if someone asks me that, I'm going to be stumped. I mean, your obvious answer is, "Fiction about romance" or, for the less sarky, it's a story about two people falling in love and living, if not happily ever after, them for the foreseeable future.

I'm representing the paranormal genre for the panel, and this makes it a little trickier. Paranormal romance is not a huge market in the UK. The authors you might find on the shelves are a) imports, mostly from America, and b) not very well known by much of the public over here. Therefore, unlike the other authors on the panel (Kate Harrison, chick lit; Anna Jacobs, sagas; Kate Hardy, category; Nicola Cornick, historical), I'm going to be going in cold, because most of the conference-goes won't be familiar with the genre.

So, as Jan (who coerced me into doing the panel in the first place) asked, "Why are elves sexy?" I immediately replied, "Didn't you see Lord of the Rings?" but I fear I'm going to need more of an answer than that.

What's so special about paranormal romance? Why do we find vampires and werewolves, traditionally the very unsexy monsters of horror stories, suddenly attractive? What about future worlds and alien species? Fantasy universes? Why is paranormal romance, well, romantic?

Hissy fits

As we took Pepper out for her walk this afternoon, Spike appeared on the corner. I gave him a cuddle. Pepper pinned him down and licked him all over. He didn't fight. He never does. When we came back, he was there again, so I let him in, gave him some cat treats, and let the kittens out of the piano room.

Spike did not like this.

He ran upstairs. Jack followed. He hissed at Jack. Jack still followed him. Spike ran downstairs and hid under the coffee table. Jack followed. Spike tried to get out at the back of the house, but Pepper was there, and I had to rescue him. He ran upstairs, downstairs again. Pepper pinned him down and he hissed and miaowed, but made no discernible effort to break free. I rescued him again and carried him to the front door.

He hissed at Pepper. He hissed at the kittens. Then, as I put him down to open the door, he hissed at me. I let him out and shut the door without a word. Spike and I usually have lots of conversations, you see.

Half an hour later, I heard him run across the conservatory roof. He was sitting outside the back door, waiting to come in, with a mouse in his mouth.

Sorry for hissing at me? Present for the kittens? Or just telling me he can feed himself?

Jack and Daisy

Prepare for the cuteness overload. One thought did occur to me: will these names (the most 'human' names I've ever given my pets) now be excluded from my list of potential character names? Although come to think of it, two of my Changeling novellas have had characters called Jack and Daisy, so I'd probably be unlikely to use them again any time soon. And, I have been known to recycle names under different spellings (I know I've had about three Finns, Alexes both male and female, and I even named a character Kat, in one of my Cat Marsters titles).

Anyway, here are some adorably cute pictures of my adorably cute babies.

Daisy, left, and Jack, right (I put collars on them to tell them apart!) They have a little cat bed, but apart from the first night they've preferred the back of this chair with its cat cushions, or the office chair (what is it with office chairs? Spike loves mine).

Engaged in their second-favourite activity. You're always warned that cats might not eat a lot to begin with in a strange place, but these two have been really tucking in. And a good job, too: it's the expensive kitten food, so they grow up extra healthy and strong--and hopefully smart, too (no Sugar, I'm not thinking of you. Well, maybe a little bit).

And here's their first-favourite activity. Apparently it's comfy for them to sleep this way--and yes, they're on the office chair (the piano room doubles as an office/study).

This morning, Jack discovered how to get out of the piano room (jumping off the piano, over the gate, is a key aspect) while the Demon Puppy was out, so explored the house a while. Here he is leaning over the stairs, trying to decide whether these glass pebbles are edible or not.

Jack posing like the beautiful boy he is.

Daisy, slightly blurry because she moves so fast in her efforts to hide! While her brother is as bold as anything (I had Jack Sparrow in mind when I named him), little Daisy is terrified of everything, and spends most of her time hiding behind chairs and doors. When she made it into the sitting room this morning, Pepper appeared on the other side of the baby gate, and so terrified Daisy that she couldn't get herself out from behind the sofa. When I rescued her, she darted back behind her chair in the safety of the piano room, so quickly I have a scratch on my chest from her launch to the floor!


And, because the poor wee motherless mite is feeling horribly left out and sulky, here's a picture of my Gorgeous Boy, Spike, when he was much the same age as Jack and Daisy. All together now: We Still Love you!

Themes

So, I was reading an article on the RWR by Julie Rowe about voice, and one of the things mentioned was core themes and stories. Julie says she writes books concerned with healing--physical and emotional. So I started thinking, what are the core themes of my books? What do they have in common?

I looked at a list of my Cat Marsters books, and tallied things up. Out of twenty titles, six have themes of Acceptance, five of Redemption, three of Second Chances, two of Transformation, and a whopping ten have themes of Independence (I didn't tally the Sophie books I write as Kate Johnson, since they have similar themes--but Independence is definitely one of them).

I thought more about this. How many of my books feature protagonists who are Outsiders? Well--let's start with Sophie, since she's the most useless spy in the history of espionage, and never quite feels she fits in. Luke, while he's a fantastic spy, is not the warmest and cuddliest of guys, and never quite feels at home in friendly company.

In my Spaceport story, the heroine is a socialite who prefers the army to her gilded life--and then after she's forced on the run and disguised as a cheap whore, doesn't really want to go back. Pretty much all my Sundown books (and there are twelve now!) feature outsiders. Of course, that's more common when you're writing paranormals, but what I mean is that my characters don't fit in even in their own worlds. Masika is the scarred, ex-concubine vampire who was cast out by her Master; Elek is a loup-garou who isn't in control of his wolf form; Con is a wizard without much power, entirely at the beck-and-call of a set of mad faeries. And that's just the first three. Ruarc is a high fae who hates his Queen and Court; Reaver is virtually a sociopath. Sofie is a werewolf who doesn't believe in werewolves!

Then there's Almost Human, and when I thought about this book--which has a very independent heroine, too--I realised there was another theme in my book. Denial--or perhaps defiance is a better term. Chance is in denial of her heritage in a major way (she's also a courtesan--you may notice another theme here). In the sequel, which I've just finished writing, her cousin Kett comes to the fore: the most defiant character I've ever written. She's not comfortable with company, rejects the title her father bestows on her, can't keep a normal job, tens to pick fights with both people and massive scary predators when she's angry--oh yes, and is the only known shapeshifter in her world. She's pretty much a textbook Outsider.

So those are my themes, as I see them. Outsiders and Independence. Even books I've written in different genders tend to come out with a similar character type, like in the Untied Kingdom, where my hero is an officer promoted from the ranks in an army where commissions are still purchased by the aristocracy, and Eve is a former popstar now living in a council flat. Oh yes, and she's from a parallel universe. I guess that's taking a theme and making it explicit!

Wimbledon

Today I'm blogging about The Championships on the Britwriters blog, so I've let Spike take over and vent his grievances about the newly arrived Jack and Daisy. Cute, ain't they?

The secret diary of Spike, aged 2 ¼

I am not happy.

Not. Happy.

Young Female has been giving me lots of cuddles lately, which made me somewhat suspicious. I mean, not that I don't get lots of cuddles anyway. Am magnificent beast, people can't help it. But there was something about the way she was talking...

Then she and Old Female came home today with two kittens in a box. Kittens! Small, black, annoying. Am sure I was never that stupid as a kitten. Was surely magnificent and stately, just as I am now.

There is a female kitten and a male one. Have not enquired as to names. Am not sure they deserve them.


To top it all off, my own personal door has been closed to keep the kittens in. Hah! Better off letting them out--they can take the Demon Puppy with them (although DP and I are at least in agreement over the stupidity of Young Female's idiotic decision. First time for everything).

Am now in an official Huff.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

I'm talking about Wimbledon fortnight, of course. I'm not even big into tennis, but I can't and never could resist Wimbledon. Grass courts, tennis whites, female players always listed as 'Miss' (or Mrs!). It's all so civilised. I don't actually have plans to go this year--while the Wimbledon Queue is quite an experience, and something of an institution of its own, it's kind of exhausting to get up at 4.30 in the morning just to queue until 10.30--and that's just for a ground ticket (for show courts, you really need to be there the night before).

Besides, as of this afternoon when I saw an ad on the vet's noticeboard, there's a possiblity I may be concerned with a new arrival this week--or maybe even two...

Read More

No, it's not a directive (although it is a jolly good suggestion), it's a blog tag thing I'm annoyed about. You know? When you have a long post, but all that shows is the first few paragraphs and then 'Read more',
and you click on that and, well, read more. Only with Blogger it's not very simple: the directions are a bit like those Help files that start, "And this bit is the keyboard," and from there leap straight into "Add the {span} tag to the style sheet after the {$MainBodyIndex$} tag." Uh...yeah. Well, anyway. I tried it, and it ate my template. So I tried it again, and this time it ate my template so thoroughly I had to go back and re-do most of it. And for some reason the header is all squished up there in the corner, with no background.

Maybe it's time to get a new blog.

Vampires and romance

So, I went for lunch today with some of the RNA-ers who live near Cambridge. Last time I did this Jan persuaded me to take part in an author panel at the conference, as one of very few paranormal authors in the RNA. She told me this time that one of the new members staying in my block at the conference is also a paranormal author and lives not far away, so I looked her up and found her at the Lunatic Horizon, and shall now stalk her until she agrees to be my minion. Or something like that.

Anyway. She had a post about vampire lovers, and the point of view that often in vampire romances, the vamp is hundreds of years old and the heroine is about 25. Clearly, this is more than just an age gap. This is a massive generation gap. A man who has seen the rise and fall of empires, who was born in the days of the bubonic plague and lived to see Aids, is going to have a slightly different outlook on life from someone who barely remembers the Berlin Wall (Actually, I'm 26 and I remember the Berlin Wall, but that's not the point).

I think what annoys me about this kind of relationship is that our hero has been brooding alone for centuries, never having found anyone to touch his unbeating heart, etc, and yet an office administrator from Chicago is the one who gets his engines running. And she's always slightly overweight and a bit mousy, isn't she, at least until she unties her ponytail, etc. (Because that's what men found attractive in Days of Yore). Er, really, Mr Vampire? All the women in the world, for hundreds of years, all those gorgeous young misses, seductive femme fatales, and all the gazillions of frumps, and you pick this particular plain Jane? She makes you happy? Why is she different from all the rest? What do you have in common? If the author hadn't decreed it so, would you have looked twice at her? Would you have looked once?

I mean, it's not always about vampires. I find myself suspending belief all the time with uneven couplings. The billionaire Alpha male who looks like a movie star isn't going to end up happily ever after with a plain Jane either. He might marry her to bear his kids and run his house, but he's going to be off boinking someone as glamorous and exciting as him behind her back, isn't he?

But then, I was never entirely sure Cinderella was going to get her happy ever after, either. Let's face it, even if Prince Charming forgave her humble origins, the tabloid press never would (Doors to Manual, anyone?), and you just know that in every row they ever have, King and Queen Charming would be whispering, "This never would have happened if he'd married a woman with breeding."

This is why I always try to put my characters on a more even footing. Ancient vampire hero? Ancient vampire heroine (She Who Dares, where my heroine was Egyptian, and had spent two thousand years crawling out of the shadow of the vampire who made her--and learning to kill anything that moved, while my hero pratted about with a business empire).

Virile, brooding Alpha, king of his people, out for revenge? Courtesan-slash-assassin with a family history involving the flattening of cities (Almost Human, with one of my mostest favouritest heroines, Chance).

I did once have an ancient vampire--a former Roman slave--and a modern young woman (Unholy Trinity). However, she was more than a little bit feisty, and leaked PhDs on the ancient world, and as a vampire turned out to be formidably strong. And the reason she caught his eye was that she looked like a model. PhD or no PhD, after fifteen hundred years Rafa was picky.

If I'm going to put a vastly more powerful/experienced/older hero with a younger/less experienced heroine, I'm going to even the playing field a bit, and make her a newly bitten vamp or were or stuffed full of latent power she didn't know about, with at least the potential to become as powerful as him. Because to me, whether the relationship is about vampires, werewolves, or plain human beings, a massive imbalance in power is never going to make for a happy ending--at least not for ever after.

I'm back

Actually I was back Friday, but too busy to post, and then on Saturday I woke up with a really bad stomach (mine, unfortunately) and spent the day wallowing in bed. Today is better, but I still haven't got my brain in gear, so I'll post more properly later!

I have my tooth in a bag

No really, I do. The dentist let me keep it. I could...I dunno, use it in a scientific experiment like Lisa Simpson, and see if I can cultivate a tiny race of people. Or I could wear it round my neck, like a trophy. Or I could do neither of those things, and just keep it somewhere non-disgusting.

Anyway. It's annoying because I can't drink alcohol for 24 hours, and tonight we're going off on holiday. No drinks in the pub, no wine with the meal...and there's only so much Diet Coke I can drink. Oh well, I suppose it's better than toothache!

See you in a week...

I've been tagged!

a. Link to the person who tagged you, which in my case is Emma Ray Garrett.

b. Post the rules on your blog.

c. Write six random things about yourself.

1. I write and draw with my left hand. Everything else, I do right-handed. Except for sports, which I can't do with either hand.
2. I'm not dyslexic, but I have great problems with left/right and east/west, and I also sometimes mix up words when I speak. Coping mechanisms have included everything from checking the L and R on the soles of my ballet slippers when I was four, to feeling for the callus on my left middle finger where I hold a pen, making an L sign with the finger and thumb of my left hand, and visualising a map of the UK, where I live in East Anglia at one side of the country, so I know which way is east and which is west.
3. I'm really cranky today because I have monster toothache, coupled with either a cold or hayfever. I got woken up at five, then six, by the Demon Puppy barking at someone walking past the house, then at seven by my neighbour's car alarm, which has been going off sporadically for two days (but never, of course, when they're at home).
4. I've just finished a book I started writing in 2005. I intended it as a sequel to Almost Human, but whenever I tried to get stuck into it, something else--another book under contract, a holiday, a family crisis, whatever--kept getting in the way.
5. I was born on St Patrick's Day. Because of this--and the useful fact of having an Irish great-grandfather--I never have to buy a drink on my birthday. Ever. So long as I'm drinking Guinness.
6. Tomorrow I'm going away for a week with my family, because it's my mum's birthday on Sunday--a Significant Birthday--and she challenged my dad to surprise her. My dad came up with a few ideas, I told him why they wouldn't work, and we came up with a plan between us. Since Mum's requirements were for four adults and a dog, but no self-catering, it wasn't easy. But it should be fun. If my tooth stops hurting.

d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Okay, Emma Ray got a load of the ones I'd tag, and I don't read many blogs of people I know well enough to tag! So... I'm breaking the rules, and just tagging Stacia D Kelly, who is always so fulsome in her praise, and Julie Cohen, who just sold a mad space-romp to Samhain who I decided not to tag since she's recently bereaved and I didn't want to bother her. So...that's just one person, then. Well, I'm a born rule-breaker, baby.

e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Emma Ray? I posted!

Review goodness!

I'm always superstitious about reviews. If the first one is good, then the rest will be. So far (touch wood, cross fingers, etc) I've only started out with good reviews. Yesterday, I got an unstarred but brilliant review for Still Waters from ParaNormal Romance.

I loved the new characters introduced -- Rachel is a hoot and one I hope keeps making appearances. Maria is a great friend and will always be there for Sophie. And who could forget her parents. They have to be the greatest parents alive.

Ms. Johnson has outdone herself with this one. She's even woven in the back story so that you don't feel lost by picking up the series in the middle. I can't wait to read the next story. Please, Ms. Johnson, hurry, hurry, hurry.

I LOVE it when reviewers say things like hurry hurry hurry!

I also got the first review for Spaceport: Incognito. I was double nervous about this one since it's my first sci-fi, but it seems to have made a good impression on JERR:

The plot was perfect, including an ending that made me jump for joy. I enjoy Ms. Marster's books very much and I hope that the Spaceport series will include more of her books. Get this one now-you won't regret it!