You Knew I Was Weird

[jadedmusings]

There is some sick, twisted, and masochistic part of me that wants to read Loving Scarlett based soley on this "F" review from Dear Author. I love books with paranormal things, and we all know by now I have a thing for werewolves, wolf shifters, etc. How can you lose with bull shifters?

I know it'll be horrible, and all the "pussy creaming" and "pussy clenching" will pain me greatly, but it's that whole train wreck thing. Too bad they're charging so much money for what is, pardon the pun, a steaming pile of bullshit. I could lie and say it's me wanting to learn more about what not to do as a writer, particularly as a writer of stories with paranormal and/or fantasy creatures with animalistic features and/or traits. But really, I just want to see how bad it really is.

(And honestly, reading that review plus the excerpts provided has me believing, as I said in the comments, that this was written by a man.)

Comments

[nagaina]

what the what I don't even

STEER shifters? Werecows?

I am torn between insane, cackling laughter and pointing out that Jack Chalker at one point wrote about a world of anthropomorphic cow people in a schlocky lite sci-fi series I was reading and that's pretty much where I stopped reading.

[jadedmusings]

I think it's that paranormal is a genre that's considered to be overdone and stagnant, though I believe it's more of an issue of writers copying ideas rather than coming up with their own. As a result, someone comes along with a zany idea like bull shifters and, well, a publishing company jumped on it while ignoring how poorly executed it was because, hey, people will apparently shell out five bucks for only 20,000 words, and they might do it nine times over because, hey, this is a nine-novella series.

[nagaina]

Yeah. I remember back in the early 90s when paranormal romance first reared its head, the entire idea seemed extremely fresh and exciting -- now everybody and their sister is publishing it and the crossover with Urban Fantasy/Horror is injecting Paranormal Romance genes into a genre already top-loaded with Anita Blake/Merry Gentry/Sookie Stackhouse ripoffs homages.

And, man, I've tried to read some of these long-running paranormal romance series' that have been recommended to me and I..just can't get into them. I can't take them seriously as either romance or horror.

Admittedly, this is part of the reason I'm taking the tact I am with the story I'm working on: in pure Lovecraftiana, "no hugging, no kissing" is frequently in effect as one of the genre conventions, male protagonists who are not supernatural love interests are actually pretty rare in Urban Fantasy/Horror, there's less overall pressure to hook up a male protagonist with a love interest by default, and, frankly, people are more likely to read the idea of having a Humanoid Abomination Stalker With A Crush as horrifying rather than romantic when the lead is a guy. Well, okay, there will be some who read it as romantic, but there's nothing I can do about that.

[jadedmusings]

I don't know what it is, but a lot of popular paranormal and/or fantasy I've tried to read has been disappointing on several levels, or just flat-out boring.

I've had an idea for a while that I fear might be seen as a Sookie Stackhouse rip-off (because I would place it in SC since, hey, write what you know) and it has vampires and weres. However, my big deal about vampires is that I don't believe they're supposed to be these cuddly emo beings who just need a good shag love. Oh sure, they can be sexy as hell, and I know what my kinks are about vampires as I picture them, but people seem to construe being a sexual being with being romantic, and that's not it. They ought to be fucking scary too, not just fucking. (There was a book whose blurb I read recently about a vampire who lost his twu luv some centuries before and the premise of the book was, "Can he overcome his loss?" I put the book back down before it burned me, because seriously. All powerful being capable of bedding any woman he wants who needs to drink blood to live is going to mope for centuries over one woman and learn to love another?)

But alas, I may never write it since I think by now a good number of readers would go, "Oh, look, another vampire novel" and just move on. Not that I think my idea of an elf and an anthropomorphic wolf in a high fantasy novel will appeal to many either, but at least that has the potential for some originality. Now to get my damn muses to work when I want them to and not the other way around.