As Anita herself might say, there’s just no pleasing some people, is there.
Lilith Saintcrow is the author of several urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and young adult books. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her two children, three cats, and assorted other strays.
If you asked me what I write I would say Paranormal Thrillers. It encompasses everything I do, and doesn’t try and pigeonhole me. The essay that follows says that I write romances—paranormal romances, but romances—and then proceeds to explain why I’ve broken all the romance rules. I broke them because no one told me there were any rules, because I hadn’t read a “romance” since junior high and that was a Harlequin back in the day when they were all squeaky clean and the barest hint of sex was all you had. Love conquers all: I knew that was a lie by the time I was ten. The adults around me had proven that. In fact, when I was young I was never getting married. I never dreamed of my wedding, or fantasized about the perfect man, because I didn’t believe in a perfect anything. By the time I was teenager I’d seen too much harsh reality, real violence, death. It’s not the stuff to make you daydream about Prince Charming. By age fourteen or fifteen I knew that if anyone was going to save my ass, it was going to have to be me. A lot of my girlfriends read romances, but I just didn’t understand the idea of them. The premise escaped me. So imagine my surprise when i started writing what i thought was a horror/mystery series about Anita Blake who raised the dead and executed vampires for the government, and was told it was a romance series. Romance? Me? Surely not.
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer came on TV I’d been writing this stuff for years, but she had her Angel and I could see that it was romantic. I could see that Jean-Claude and Anita was romantic, and that Anita and Richard was romantic, but I still thought of the books as a mystery series—one with vampires and werewolves, but still a mystery series. But a lot of my female audience thought of them as romances. That was fine with me, until I wrote the unforgiveable. I had Anita choose the wrong man.
Oh, dear God, I took crap for her sleeping with the vampire and not the good little werewolf. Then later on I took even more crap because having slept with both she chose to leave both their asses and try to maintain her own identity. And then, I apparently committed the last and most unforgiveable romance crime, I brought in a new man out of the blue, Micah, and had her fall for him. I have never had such hatred directed toward me as I did when Narcissus in Chains came out. Richard, our good little werewolf, had dumped Anita, but the fans were so adamant that she had dumped him I actually went back and reread the scene, thinking I was misremembering. But no, he dumps her. But somehow it was her fault, my fault. It was as if I’d personally dumped their favorite brother.
I didn’t understand it then, and really don’t now, but this essay explains by not even mentioning the other men. The essay talks about romance and talks only about Richard and Jean-Claude, the up-right good guy and the seductive bad boy, werewolf and vampire respectively. The other men are only hinted at, and that sums up the reason I am not romance. I’ve broken toomany rules. I’m not mystery because I’ve broken their genre rules by having the relationships be important. I am neither fish nor fowl, for any genre. Let me say that my female readership has continued to grow since I broke these rules, and my male readership has grown by leaps and bounds, too. Sometimes by not fitting in you find that you’re not the only one who felt restricted by the rules. I write Paranormal Thrillers, and for that definition, if you need one, I fit just fine.
—Laurell
Dating the Monsters
Why It Takes
a Vampire or a Wereguy
to Win the Heart of the Modern It Girl
by L. Jagi Lamplighter
Time was when the Romance section of the bookstore was a safe and cozy retreat from all things unfrivolous. Sure, there might be an occasional gothic or mystery romance with a terrifying moment or two, but one could basically rely on the fact that any book you took off the shelves would be like eating spun sugar. Going to buy a romance novel was like visiting the confectionary section of a bakery.
Not anymore! Where once dwelt only roses and Almack’s, now live vampires, demons, werewolves, Greek gods, and yes, even robots. Though, most of all, it is vampires. And not all these books are sugar sweet, either. It’s like heading down to the confectionary and finding yourself in hot spicy foods instead!
By now, you are probably asking yourself: How did this happen, and what does it have to do with Anita Blake?
Buffy, Anita Blake, and the Paranormal Romance Invasion
It started on television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer but it was Laurell K. Hamilton and Anita Blake who brought stories of girls and monsters to the world of popular books. Though paranormal romance is now a booming business, Anita Blake still leads the way, a giant striding amongst her younger sisters. Anita both kills the monsters and dates them. It’s like having your cake and shooting it, too.
The question naturally arises: Why monsters? What is it about vampires and werewolves—once only the stuff of horror stories— that makes them the ideal modern romantic hero? To find the answer, we must first examine the age-old war between culture and drama.
The Needs of Culture Vs. the Needs of Drama
Throughout history, a tug of war has existed between the desire to use stories to teach and the desire for them to entertain. At times, such as the Middle Ages with its passion plays, teaching has won out completely. Other times, such as Shakespeare’s age, entertainment triumphed. (It is amusing to look back and recall that Shakespeare’s plays, which so many children dread reading in English class today, were written as pure entertainment for the masses!)
The desire to use stories to teach, I shall call for the purpose of this essay “the needs of culture.” Proponents of this idea hope to use the medium of entertainment to lead people to make the choices necessary for a moral, law abiding society. Such societies are great to live in—not fearing that you are going to be carjacked or molested really makes a person’s day. And if we could make our children truthful, upright, and brave through examples in literature, that would be a very gratifying indeed!
The problem is that, most of the time, the more pleasant a culture is to live in, the less interesting it is to read about. A really fine writer can make anything interesting, but few writers achieve this pinnacle of brilliance. It takes a superb writer to make the process of painting a landscape interesting to an outsider. It only takes a writer of ordinary skill to bring excitement to a chase scene with a thief and a company assassin on ski mobiles in the midst of the Winter Olympics.
In our entertainment today, the needs of drama often outweigh the needs of culture. We would like to teach our children to be peaceful and chaste, but violence and sex sell. They draw readers. But this does not keep the guardians of culture from criticizing our entertainment when it falls short of the demands of culture.
So What Are the Needs of Culture?
What are the values those who favor improving the culture wish to put across? Currently, they fall into two categories: traditional cultural values and modern cultural values.
Traditional culture covers the kind of thing listed in the Ten Commandments or the Boy Scouts’ pledge. It wants people to be honest, upright, brave, clean, etc. The needs of traditional culture require that good guys be upright, bad guys always get their comeuppance, and the line between the two remains crisply defined.
Modern culture, too, has needs, things it wants drama to portray as good and to encourage in its audience. This desire is so prevalent in our society that it has its own name: political correctness. Races must get along. All people, regardless of rank or birth, must be treated as equals. The old taboos are to be laid to rest; no one needs them anymore. Nobility and grandeur are to be sneered at, and women must be the equal of men.
What About the Needs of Drama?
The needs of drama are quite different from those of culture. They are ruled by the desire to entertain. Whatever
enthralls the audience most, that is what drama requires. Unfortunately for those who would use stories to teach cultural mores, what makes a story entertaining is often directly at odds with what is good or virtuous or politically correct.
Drama is about conflict. It is about breaking taboos, the more shocking the better! Thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics, adulterers—all the things that traditional culture does not wish to glamorize—make for entrancing drama. But it is not just traditional culture that gets trampled by the needs of drama. Bigotry, class struggles, and inequality among the sexes also make for excellent storytelling.
Are the people who fear the effect of drama on society starting at shadows? Perhaps not. Shock value is temporary. The moment you have seen a few stories that violate a particular taboo, that tension becomes old hat. Nobody cares anymore. There is no sense of surprise. People do not care if they see the same thing in another movie. They start thinking of that particular behavior as normal, or at least as a part of reality that must be endured.
So those who wish they could guard culture by controlling drama do have a strong argument on their side. But they cannot change the facts: a story that explores boundaries and breaks taboos is often a better story than one that does not.
Of course, these categories are only generalizations. The same story can serve both forces at different times or support some cultural values while chipping away at others. For the sake of simplicity, however, they will be discussed here as if they are distinct categories.
Love’s Savage Fury
When I was younger, I was too embarrassed to admit that I read romances. I used to hide them under other books or read them only when I was entirely alone. After all, women were the equals of men; that meant we should act like men in all ways, right? Indulging in any feminine behavior was frowned upon, and what was more feminine than reading about Vikings carrying off swooning maidens? No modern woman would allow herself to be treated in such a fashion! So why would she encourage the degradation of her sisters by buying books that glorified such behavior?
As I got older—and learned that a higher percentage of romances are sold each year than any other type of book—I decided I should not be ashamed. I should stand up for what I enjoyed—even if it was curling up by the fire and letting myself be swept away by the trials of love. So I came out of the romance closet (which is pink inside and hung with lace and portraits of Fabio. That alone was motivation to get me out of there. Never really been a Fabio fan. Had I had my way, I would have decorated the place with posters of Adrian Paul.).
But what is romance? What makes a romance reader sigh and snuggle down among the pillows on her love seat or sit hugging a box of tissues as she reads, tears running down her cheeks? Or, more to the point, what is a reader looking for when she stops by for a taste of spun sugar or even hot spice?
First and foremost, she is looking to be swept away, to feel that wonderful tingle of feminine emotion as Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs, as Elizabeth realizes that she loves Darcy, as Buffy falls for Angel, as Anita finally chooses between Richard and Jean-Claude. There is a reason that romances have titles such as Savage Passion and Love’s Savage Fury. That heady tingly-girly feeling that sweeps away the reader requires two things: obstacles that give the couple time to build up sexual tension before being brought together and an exaggeration of the masculine and feminine qualities—the dominant and authoritative vs. the graceful and nurturing.
Or in other words, taboos and inequality between the sexes.
Taboo or Not Taboo
Of all genres, none relies upon taboos as heavily as romance. The romance—a.k.a. the story of girl meets boy, boy chases girl, girl gets boy—requires obstacles to keep our heroine from snagging her man right away. Taboos—cultural reasons why the two should not be together—are among the most compelling.
Commoners cannot marry noblemen. Montagues are forbidden to marry Capulets. Good devout children are forbidden to marry outside their religion, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Hindu. Harem girls cannot fall in love—with anyone! Some of the best romances, and the best novels altogether, are about lovers who cross these boundaries, whose love bridges the taboo gap.
It is here, in the land of taboos, that the needs of modern culture and the needs of romance clash most drastically.
Modern culture does not like old-fashioned taboos. It frowns upon them and removes them from society. The old taboos that kept men and women apart are a thing of the past. Nowadays, nothing except inclination stops partners from jumping directly into bed the first instance they meet.
Socially, there is much to praise about this lack of false obstacles; however, free access to the opposite sex is the death knell of romance— or at least of romantic drama. This is one reason that historical romances are so popular. Romances set in times when taboos governed how men and women could interact, when they could see each other, and whether they could snatch a few moments alone come automatically primed with all the necessary ingredients for tension and conflict.
All Is Fair in Love and War
So, what exactly causes this tingly-girly feeling? What creates a sense of romance? Romance comes from the struggle of two lovers to come together—but not just any struggle with any outcome. There is a set of principles by which the romance world operates. They are the three unspoken promises that draw the story along.
The first is: love conquers all. It does not matter what promises are broken or what sins are committed because the reader knows in her heart that love will set everything aright in the end. The very laws of the universe will rearrange fate to reunite the lovers. Their missteps will turn out to be justified, and all crimes will be excused when love triumphs over all.
The second is: true love pierces all illusions. No matter how wild or unkempt the man, no matter how dowdy the girl, the reader knows that their true love, the one person for whom they are meant, will pierce this false veil and see their true self shining beneath. The heroine can spot the prince where the rest of the world sees only a monster. The hero can see the pearl of great price for which he will, if need be, sell all that he has, where eyes not made perfect by love see merely another pretty face.
The third unspoken promise is: happily ever after. No matter how dire events may seem, we know that, within the pages of these books, all our hopes will come true. By the last page, we will have won our way to the world of happy marriages, where everyone is filled with joy and has bundles and bundles of children.
Fundamentally, romance is about hope.
No Sissy Men Need Apply
The art of writing a good romance is the art of creating in your reader a rush of the most feminine emotions, the ones that make us weep, catch our breath, and clasp our hands with joy. To do this, the story needs to present a feminine character confronting stark masculinity. Merely the ordinary man, the nice man, is not enough. The romantic hero must have exaggerated masculine qualities so as to create the illusion that he is a cut above those around him in some specific and distinctly masculine way.
Arrogance, violence, brusqueness, bull-headedness—all the qualities modern culture abhors—are the qualities that give the impression of masculinity in a story. Why? Because these qualities seem so alien to most women. The very fact that the hero’s behavior is in contrast with the feminine and the ordinary emphasizes his masculinity—so long as he also has definite recognizable virtues to balance them out. The more uncivilized and masculine the hero, the more successful the romance—look at the wild, unruly Rhett Butler as opposed to the gentle, mannerly Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett might love Ashley, but Rhett is the one who captures the reader’s heart! The more the man does not do what society expects, the more he exhibits unbridled masculinity, the sexier he seems on paper.
In romances, this boils down to the two archetypical romantic hero types: the playboy and the recluse. The first, the Rhett Butler type—or maybe we should call it the Jean-Claude type—has had so many women that he is immune to being
affected by any particular one, until the right girl comes along and catches his heart. The second, the Darcy type, is immune to feminine appeal all together, living a thoroughly masculine, bachelor existence, until the heroine arrives and shatters his stately world.
Because the premise of all romance is, of course, that beauty tames the beast—that this woman, the one right woman, can rein in those very qualities that make the hero more of a man than those around him. The more exaggerated the hero’s unsociable masculine qualities in the beginning of the story, the more of a victory achieved by the heroine.
Of Lords and Pirate Captains
If going all tingly-girly requires manly heroes, how does romance achieve this manliness? An easy way is to make him literally more powerful than the heroine. Remember, romance is about the drama of romantic love, not a paean to the modern idea of equality among the sexes. Oh, the heroine can be spunky! She can take no gruff from no man. But romance works best if she is the social inferior of the hero, when she is at a disadvantage.
This social inferiority allows her pursuer to put pressure on her, to insist that she yield to his demands, and all those yummy things that make romances romantic. It also makes her final victory all the more noteworthy. If a powerful princess wins the heart of a nobleman, no one is surprised. If the younger daughter of an overlooked squire rises from obscurity to transform the hero and win herself a duchy, her accomplishment is far more triumphant.
In historical romances, it is easy to put the hero in a position of power compared to the girl. Historical romance heroes are nearly always lords, highwaymen (who are usually lords in disguise), pirates (who are sometimes lords in disguise), cowboys, Vikings, or Indian braves (Indian braves, mind you—which illustrates another clash between the needs of modern culture and the needs of drama. No young woman is filled with feminine thrills at the thought of a being carried off by a Native American. But an Indian!).
Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series Page 5