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Sailor Boy does not like me watching movies about novelists. Whenever we do, and I get on one of my tears (you should have seen me when the recent Cheaper by the Dozen was out), he always says, “Hollywood? Being unrealistic? You don’t say” and hopes I’ll leave it at that.
I admit, I’m more lenient when it’s obviously a magic realism situation, as in the Will Ferrell/Emma Thompson vehicle Stranger than Fiction. But in the aforementioned Cheaper by the Dozen, in which the author, minutes after mailing off her manuscript, is called for a meeting in New York, handed a hardcover copy of her book, and told that she is already been booked on a multi-month, multi-city tour, and if she doesn’t go they’ll cancel her book contract (never mind that they’ve already planned a massive marketing campaign, not to mention done a printing!!!!), yeah, I went through the roof.
I think the reason is because I devote a significant amount of time to dispelling myths about the publishing industry to family, friends, people I meet at cocktail parties, entertainment law class students, and random folks on the internet (hi, guys!), and I blame a lot of these myths on portrayals like the above. Not a month goes by but I see another aspiring writer talking about how the reason they want to go into self-publishing is because NY publishers will force them to write X many books a year and go on endless book tours, and put their picture on the cover, and etc. etc. (My standard response: how many books on your shelf have a picture of the author on them? Maybe 30%? Less if your taste runs to mass markets instead of trade or hardcover? Most authors I know would kill to get on their publisher’s schedule more than once a year, and I know only a handful of authors who ever go on tour.)
I guess Hollywood tries to glamorize life for all professions. Cops won’t watch procedurals, etc. (Though I hear that the cops in Baltimore *love* The Wire, which scares me enormously.) But this is my only profession, so it’s the only one I get to be annoyed about.
Last night, Sailor Boy, his mom, and I, watched Martian Child, starring John Cusack. This is a movie based on a novel, based on a true story by established, award winning SF writer David Gerrold (who I’m not familiar with, but according to Wikipedia, he wrote a ton of novels, and a lot of Star Trek episodes, including “The Trouble with Tribbles”). The “true” part of the story, I believe, is about how Gerrold adopted a little boy who thought he was from outerspace.
In the movie, John Cusack’s character is an established (???) SF writer with a hit hit novel (about to become a movie) called Dracobahn. Dracobahn is described as “Harry Potter in space,” by which I took it to mean that it was a hugely popular book with crossover appeal in both the children and adult markets. So perhaps like Ender’s Game, only moreso? John Cusack lives in a gorgeous house somewhere in the countryside in Southern California.
For most of the movie, I was fine. He’s apparently late with his sequel (unfortunately titled “The Revenge of Dracobahn” and to be honest, John, I think that’s your problem right there), and is experiencing writer’s block due not only to the recent death of his wife, but also because he’s contractually bound to turn in a sequel to a book that ended with the death of all the main characters. So far, so good. None of this sounds bizarre to me.
Now, his agent does seem to drop by the house an awful lot (he apparently has an L.A. based agent, which is unusual, but not unheard of, especially if John, like Gerrold, does a lot of screenwriting work as well). I don’t know how screenwriting agents work — are they more like Ari from Entourage, totally in the client’s business all the time? I don’t know any literary agents like that. I get emails or phone calls, and usually, only when there’s something to discuss (a cover, a contract, a challenging revision request).
At one point, he gives a talk/reading at a planetarium, and there are about 20 people in folding chairs in the room, which I, personally, found very very realistic.
But then, about 3/4 into the movie, it goes off the rails. His agent (over a round of golf) informs him that the publisher is flying out to California and holding some enormous black tie function in Hollywood, the sole purpose of which seems to be for John to “ritualistically hand over the first draft” of the sequel. Which seems like a lot of money for a publisher to spend on a publicity stunt with no product to push, but whatever. We’ll pretend it coincides with the release of the paperback of Dracobahn, or the wrap party for the movie, or something.
So he shows up at this party, clutching what is supposed to be the manuscript, though it can’t be more than 25 pages long and is bound in one of those red pleather Kinkos covers I used for my senior thesis. I couldn’t get over this, no matter how many times Sailor Boy told me to shut up and watch the movie. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been doing proofs, and my nice, compact, 75k manuscript is a massive massive pile of paper on my desk. There is no way anyone can buy that as a manuscript. And the binding?
(SB wants you all to know that he did point out that the binding might be an affectation, like the “ritualistic handing over” of the draft. Which sure. Maybe. But then those 25 pages are ritualistic, too.)
Nobody notices him, though there are probably a hundred or more people in the room, listening to the chamber orchestra, drinking wine, and milling about in front of an enormous poster of his face (John says he looks like Chairman Mao.)
At this point the publisher swans up to him, calls for attention from the audience, and goes “This is [John Cusack]. And he’s brilliant.” The speech being apparently over, she grabs the manuscript out of his hands and everyone, apropos of nothing, goes back to milling. Whereupon the publisher introduces him — introduces him! — to his publicist. Um, he’s never met his publicist before? But he’s all chummy with the publisher? Is she also his editor? Is he with a small press?
In passing, the slim, slim, maybe 175 page trade paperbacks (ostensibly of Dracobahn) placed all over the room do in fact, indicate a tiny, tiny press, since the cover and the sizing had the distinct POD look to them. It was some sort of neon orange and yellow planetary (like a closeup of a pastel artist’s rendition of Jupiter) color wash with white text. Very odd looking. Not at all what one would expect of a major bestseller.
Anyway, what comes after is a bit of a spoiler, but it’s also really odd, though perhaps not anything to compare to the non-event black tie gala, ritualistic draft-handing, short bound-manuscript-having, publicist-introducing, ugly book-pushing, bizarre truncated speech-giving shenanigans that went before.
Had to get that off my chest. Just so you know — the book business isn’t like that. Manuscripts never look like that, and I wish Hollywood would stop making it out like it was. The most realistic interpretation I’ve seen of writing in a major motion picture was Romancing the Stone. She lived in a normal-sized apartment, with a normal life, and would meet her editor out at a bar for normal drinks because they both lived in Manhattan. (The bit at the end where she stood in her editor’s office while she read the book was a little odd, but the rest of it seemed very on target to me!)
I can’t speak for the treasure hunting portion, though.
A recent review of Julie Leto’s book, Phantom Pleasures (in passing, I viewed the hero’s old fashioned, flowery talk as a feature, not a bug), included a comment thread that digressed into the topic of characters’ hair.
They discussed the preponderance of red hair in romance novel heroines (this has also been a topic in YA), as well as the lack of blond heroes (this is often attributed to the fact that blond heroes don’t sell covers).
I started looking at the characters in my own novels, natch. In the unsold romances, I had brown/brown, red/blonde (yes, a redheaded heroine, but her hair is truly awful, a short, frizzy orange mop), blonde/blonde (my model for this hero was Sean Bean), brown/brown. Only the last heroine, a brunette, had hair that the hero ever spent time thinking about. Hers was really gorgeous, though. Long and thick and rich in color.
The two main characters of my contracted novels have, respectively, average hair and really great hair, but I don’t spend much time talking about either. Their hair is not particularly interesting to me, to the people they interact with, or to the story at large.
 Amy has nondescript brown hair. Unlike the covers on the books, it’s not incredibly long. In the first book, it’s a longish, layered bob that she can barely get into a ponytail. It’s grown out somewhat in the second book, and over the summer, she experimented with red streaks. (College is when I discovered hair dye, so I figured Amy could, too.) The only description you get in book three is that she can still get it in a ponytail. Amy likes ponytails. (I hated them, personally. They hurt.)
Jenny, Clarissa, and Odile get much more in depth hair descriptions. I think Amy has a bit of hair envy going on when it comes to Clarissa’s gorgeous, long blond tresses (possibly extensions), and with Jenny, her endless hair is… well, you people who have read the books know what it is.
I had really long hair when I was in college, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered to cut it. It was probably as long, if not longer than the hair of the cover-model-Amy, and really, really thick. I cut it all off the year after I graduated. That’s a story in and of itself.
Astrid, the heroine of the unicorn book, looks like this.
Her hair is actually lighter than that, though, more like a white-blond, cornsilk kind of color. She showed up that way, and she showed up being named Astrid, too. One of the few characters who sprung, fully-formed like that. My little Athena.
So Astrid’s got this gorgeous, to-die-for hair, if you stop and think about it, which she never does, and as a result, the narrative never does. It’s not particularly practical in her line of work, so she tends to keep it tucked away in braids as well. I know for a fact that it’s not what her love interest finds attractive about her.
I wonder if people will meet her, see that she’s got waist-length, white blond hair, and decide that I’ve tipped over into Rapunzel land. Or Ayla land. Or Eowyn land.
Hmmmm, interesting. Perhaps I’ll just say it’s an homage to all three.
I recently received a comment on one of my old (almost three years now, but still very popular) posts. It’s the one on Four Act Structure:
Sean Ashby said:
Four acts, eh? Very interesting, thank you! I’m learning so much more about structure than I ever thought existed. I just read an interview over at Writer Unboxed with Blake Snyder about his book “Save the Cat”.
He’s a screenwriter, but the same principles apply to novels, I think. Anyway, he breaks down all stories into only 10 basic, fundemental stories (using movies as examples, natch). He says that if you model your story around these “primal” story arcs, you’ll connect with and engage the reader every time.
Ever read it, or ever heard of approaching stories in a similar way?
Again, thanks for the post!
Thanks, Sean! By the way, I love the drawings in your portfolio. I am deeply envious of anyone with skills in visual art. I can’t even do stick figures.
I did read Save the Cat. It was a few years ago now, and I can’t find my copy at the moment, but I remember enjoying some of it and then getting lost when it got too much into the film industry end of things. (This is not uncommon for me when reading books that talk about story, then talk about story in terms of Hollywood. Sometimes it works for a novelist, and sometimes she’s glad she deals with the east coast!)
By the way, the entire interview with Blake is worth reading. Check it out: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Regarding how many different “story types” there are… sure, why not? Sounds good to me. Snyder is not the first person to break that down, and he won’t be the last. Rudyard Kipling supposedly claimed there were 69, but I think that this must just be a theme to the blog this week. It’s just another form of analysis.
Another breakdown, one I learned in my freshman lit classes in college, goes like this:
1. Man* against man.
2. Man against nature.
3. Man against society.
4. Man against God.
5. Man against himself.
(I’ve also seen this one with the addition of “Man against the supernatural” and “Man against machine” but I think the latter, at least, can usually be broken down into Man against man/society/himself depending on whether or not we’re dealing with a Terminator, Matrix, or Paul Bunyan paradigm, here. Yes, I’m joking. Kinda.)
I’m also fond of the following: there are two plots:
1. A man comes to town.
2. A man leaves town.
Now, all this is fun, and a good intellectual parlor game (like the one Sailor Boy and I play where we try to figure out the way in which The Terminator, the Matrix, and Dune can all exist on a continuum — which I swear, it works), and seriously, I can play literary criticism games ’til people start chucking their popcorn and Milk Duds at me and scream that I’m ruining the movie, but do I approach writing stories that way? Nah.
I think it works better in retrospect, to start with. I mean, I can usually sit down and go, “My manuscript is a romance,” (or an adventure, or a mystery, or an insert-genre-here), but honestly, it works better for me to write it and turn off the literary analysis until I’ve got a good handle on the nuts and bolts. My internal editor is a bit of a bugbear, so I’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep her gagged and hogtied in the far recesses of mind.
But engaging with the reader is NEVER a bad thing for a writer to do, so whatever helps you get there is awesome. If that means throwing a dart at one of x-many plots, or doing a posterboard or interviewing your characters as to their favorite running show brand, go for it.
Plus, I’m a big fan of saving the cat. I’ve pulled that particular trick out of the bag before. I’ve shot it to hell, too, but that’s another story.
And on the topic of tips from screenwriters, I highly, highly recommend Michael Hague. I’ve attended several of Hague’s workshops and it’s always a revelation for me. Now I’ve got his books and DVDs, too, though I haven’t done anything with them since I’ve been in deadline hell for the last few months. His ideas about plot and structure growing from character arcs really resonate with me. Seriously, check him out.
To the writer/blog readers: what writing tips have really worked for you lately?
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* Please note, all uses of word “man” above to be a substitute for protagonist, whether that’s a man, a woman, a talking bunny rabbit, or a superintelligent form of the color blue.
HelenKay Dimon recently clued me into the page 99 rule used by book critics. (Though some say it’s the page 69 rule. And no one seems to know who, precisely, invented it.) But this is the gist:
The rule is this: skip to page 99, read it, and if the writing or scene grabs you, chances are, it’s worth beginning. If not, toss it.
I think I’m too much of a purist to go around spoiling myself in that manner. Though if I start thinking about it too hard, it makes more sense that this rule is “69″ rather than “99,” due to common story structure.
Anyway, I ran right out and proceeded to 99 all my books.
In Secret Society Girl, page 99 takes place during the first scene post-initiation, when Amy is meeting the other taps. It includes a list, as well as the introduction of Odile Dumas, a.k.a. Lil’ Demon, who is described thusly:
A slender, stunning woman with waist-length red hair joined our group and extended a graceful hand toward me. Now, this chick I knew. But of course, you all know everything about Odile Dumas as well. She’d been tabloid fodder since she was 15. Her matriculation to Eli had largely been viewed by all as an attempt to present herself as less Lindsay Lohan and more Natalie Portman. But, to the media’s shock, she’d taken to collegiate life with gusto and all but dropped out of public view. Odile hadn’t had an album or a movie out in three years, and word around campus was that she was smarter (and less slutty) than anyone had expected (or hoped).
“Little Demon,” she purred, “but if I end up pursuing that hip-hop career, I’ll change it to Lil’ Demon.” The name rolled off her tongue with such ease that we all knew at once — hip hop career or no — what we’d end up calling her.
Page 99 of Under the Rose is a confrontation scene:
“This is what we agreed on, Jen.” His voice was perfectly even, as if he were discussing the weather. “I fail to see how anything has changed. You were the one that told me–”
“Not here, please And not now. Seriously, it’s not right.”
“You promised me you would. You swore it. Were you lying? Were you lying to me?” And there was a hint of emotion in his voice, a carefully reined anger that slipped a bit on the “me.”
“No, of course not. It’s just so hard. So much harder than I thought it would be. I’m not sure I want to do it anymore.”
“I don’t understand. I love you, Jen. Don’t you know that? I trust you.”
“I know. I know you do.” Her voice broke on her words.
“And you love me… don’t you? Don’t you love me? If you love me, then why is it so hard to do what I want?”
Page 99 of Rites of Spring Break is a BIG OL’ SPOILER that I’m not touching with a ten foot pole, here. Sorry!
And, though this probably won’t be page 99 of the printed book, here’s the first paragraph of the page from Rampant:
Not again. I stood, frozen, as the unicorn barreled toward the girls. In my mind’s eye, I saw Grant’s face, purple and poisoned, but I could not will my feet to move. The scent of death filled my nostrils, blood roared in my ears. And yet, even through my fear, I could feel myself—my innate hunter instinct—gauging the distance between my body and the unicorn’s. The world slowed, just like the last time I’d chased her, just like the time I’d gone after the kirin. My thigh muscles tensed as if to spring. And yet, I didn’t move. I couldn’t make it in time. It was too late.
Fun!
I’ve been tagged by Marianne! Looks fun:
You’re feeling: Exhilarated and exhausted. I have completed my eighth manuscript, the longest yet!
To your left: the couch, the side table and lamp, Sailor Boy’s Rock Band guitar, an ARC of Ink Exchange, and, on the wall, the framed copy of my first newspaper cover story.
On your mind: taxes, book revisions, and titles for SSG4.
Last meal included: margaritas on the rocks, fajitas.
You sometimes find it hard to: accept that certain people aren’t going to like you no matter what you do.
The weather: rainy and cold. I miss Florida on days (weeks, months) like this.
Something you have a collection of: Unicorns! It’s an odd phenomenon at this point.
A smell that cheers you up: marinara
A smell that can ruin your mood: rain
How long since you last shaved: Sunday
The current state of your hair: bed head, though even at it’s best, it’s artfully bed head.
The largest item on your desk/workspace (not computer): cover flat of Rites of Spring (Break)
Your skill with chopsticks: pathetic, despite the careful tutelage of both a high school friend and my husband, who have both lived in Asia. I was out the other week with my brother and his wife, and they were putting me to shame. The restaurant had those really difficult slippery plastic chopsticks, too.
Which section you head for first in a bookstore: Front tables, then to visit my book, then young adult.
Something you’re craving: Jamba Juice. They shut down the one near my house, It used to be my carrot on a stick.
Your general thoughts on the presidential race: I actually like all the remaining main party candidates, which is a new thing for me. I’m very curious to see how the running mates pan out, because I think, in the last election, that had a big effect on the voters.
How many times have you been hospitalized this year: Never. (Is this really a question?) Sailor Boy on the other hand…
Favorite place to go for a quiet moment: My shower! Actually, once the weather gets nicer, Rock Creek Park is lovely…
You’ve always secretly thought you’d be a good: Salon owner in 19th century Paris. Alas, it is not to be.
Something that freaks you out a little: Roaches. And not a little.
Something you’ve eaten too much of lately: Pizza. Tea
You have never: Published a short story.
You never want to: Say never.
Ooh, this was fun! I’m tagging the fabulous writers of Books, Boys, Buzz
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Also, I forgot to pick a winner in my last giveaway post. So I’m going to pick TWO.
GINA ROBINSON
and
MELISSA
You have each won a copy of Phantom Pleasures! Drop me an email with your address and I’ll send it out. And congratulations to both of you on your perseverance. How funny that both winners are writers.
You ever wake up in a bad mood? I did this morning, for reasons I’m not entirely interested in getting into here on the blog, but as I was perusing Scalzi’s daily screeds, I ran across something that almost entirely knocked the mood out of me:
Our terror stems from the fact we’re soft squishy primates, descended from animals even softer, squishier and smaller than we, and thus to survive as a species our brains have instinctually internalized the concept that something big and mean that we can’t see lurking right over there is totally going to eat us.
Hee hee. That one’s for my brother-in-law.
 [Note from Diana: Today, we have a special guest blog from Julie Leto, author of PHANTOM PLEASURES. Keep reading to see who won yesterday's giveaway and for another opportunity to enter!]
First, want to thank Diana for the opportunity to hijack her blog for a day. The release of PHANTOM PLEASURES is a really big deal for me because it has been a long time coming. Most writers expect a two or three year delay between story conception and publication, but how about fifteen years? That’s stretching it, even for me.
I started writing seriously in 1987 when, after much too much wine, a friend and I decided to write a historical romance. Even the next morning, we thought it was a good idea and proceeded to start researching, pre-Google. Oh, the hours we spent in special collections in the library. Oh, the money we spent on research books! After about four months of research, we started writing and a year later, had a completed novel.
It never sold and trust me when I tell you that the World of Letters is better off for it.
We wrote one more historical romance together and then after writing a few chapters of a third, decided our friendship would be better served if we didn’t write together anymore. She went on to pursue her dream of becoming a caterer while I continued writing.
I futzed around with many different story ideas in many different subgenres of romance until I finally got the idea for a story about a ghost on a haunted island. At the time, Silhouette was publishing a line called Shadows, which featured paranormal and non-paranormal stories in the vein of Nine Coaches Waiting, dark, romantic gothic stories set in the present day. I tailored the book to the line and finished it. After going through the query process, I had an editor who wanted to read it. I also placed in a contest where the senior editor (Leslie Wainger) requested the manuscript. I sent it in, very heartened. The editor sent me back a 13 page revision letter.
Now, you’d think this was bad news, but I’d been in the biz long enough to know it was not. An editor doesn’t spend the time writing a 13 page revision letter unless she was seriously interested. I called her. We chatted and all sounded well. She really liked the sexiness and the setting and the characters, but could I tweak a, b, c through z? No problem.
I did every revision. Checked them off like a good little doobie. I sent it in as quickly as possible…though it likely took me at least three months because I had another day job and a night job back then. I waited. I waited and waited and waited. Then finally, about three-four months later, I got a phone message from my husband, who home for lunch, called to tell me I had a package from Silhouette.
A package. No a phone call. A package. Again, I’d been in the biz long enough to know this was NOT good.
He read me the rejection over the phone. That self-initiated act of cruelty took all of two minutes. It was a form rejection.
Now, I’m a fairly thick-skinned person. I can take just about anything this industry can dish out, but I have to tell you, this one nearly did me in.
A form rejection? After all that work? And not even signed personally by the editor who’d requested all the changes! Or the Senior Editor who’d asked to see the book!
Long story short (too late, you say!) the line had folded. The editor who’d requested the changes had been reassigned or left (I can’t remember…I just know she’s an agent now) and the senior editor had moved on as well. I was likely a victim of very bad timing.
Or good timing, depending on your perspective.
Because while I tried several other times to sell that manuscript to other publishers, nothing came of it and the very next manuscript I wrote was the first one I sold. Then, twenty books later, I decided that the pendulum of reader interest had swung sufficiently to the paranormal enough for me to drag out that old story again.
Only it no longer existed, except in my mind. Not even the diskettes remained. I had a hard copy of the first three chapters, but that was all.
So I started from scratch. And man, am I ever glad I did!
So much came back to me–and that has to mean something. The hero, the setting, the castle, the curse. The heroine, whose name had to change because I’d used her original name in another story, grew into someone a lot less tragic and a lot ballsier, though her profession and motivation remained the same. But now that I’d written over twenty books, my skill set had grown into such that I could really weave a more complex story into the simple tale I’d written previously. The villain totally changed. I added secondary characters. I changed the time period for the brothers…heck, the hero didn’t even have brothers before! And I added the gypsy theme because I’d learned writing my RITA nominee, “Surrender,” and the companion book, UNDENIABLE, that I really loved gypsies and gypsy lore.
Fifteen years later, a story that haunted me is finally hitting the stands.
And by the way, Valoren (as referenced in the title) is the name of the fictional gypsy colony in PHANTOM PLEASURES. If you’d like to read the opening scene that takes place in 1747 Valoren, click here. You can follow that link to seven more excerpts. By then, you’ll know if the book interests you.
And thanks again, Diana, for the opportunity to guest blog with you!
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Diana again. Thank you, Julie, for coming onto my blog. I love this book, and I love the story behind it, too. It’s one of perseverance, ingenuity, and being in the right place at the right time!
Now, the giveaways. Yesterday’s winner is KAREN LINGEFELT. Karen, email me, if by some strange change, you do not already have a copy of this book.
Another chance to win today! Leave a note in the comments about a time that you stuck with something and it paid off!
My first foreign edition, from AST Publishers in Russia. Isn’t it exciting? Translation of the cover copy care of some good friends currently living in Latvia:
“Secret Society Girl”
First of Diana Peterfroynd’s stories about the “Ivy League” – light and funny student reading.
Diana Peterfroynd graduated from Yale University . She lives in Washington , D.C. This is the author’s first novel.
A Yale student, the ambitious Ami Haskil, editor of the university literary journal, has received an invitation.
This girl was sure, that they want to accept her into the literary society “Quill and Ink.” But what a surprise it was for Ami when she found out that she got into the most influential university club, “Rose and Coffin!”
This club is famous for the fact that only young people from the highest levels of society are allowed to join.
How will this experiment end?
“A peek through the keyhole at secret, elite universities… a brilliant plot!”
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In other news, the winner of yesterday’s giveaway is petite. Petite, please email me your address to receive your prize.
In addition, I’ve still not heard from Trish Ryan about the last giveaway (for the ARC of Rites of Spring (Break)). Trish, email me!
Finally, I’m giving away another copy of PHANTOM PLEASURES. To win, simply leave a comment in this blog about you favorite part of the Russian cover and/or cover copy.
* Secret Society Girl
The Week of Giveaways Has Begun!
This weekend, at the conference, I was talking to erotica author Megan Hart about the current popularity of paranormal romance, and we touched upon the subject of picking your paranormal creatures with care, because of the insurmountability of certain conflicts.
Vampire: “He’s an immortal bloodsucker and I’m a human woman.” Most vampire books on the market today resolve this conundrum by turning the human woman into a vampire, or into a vampire-like creature of the book’s world choice. Because it’s not an HEA if she dies a few years down the road and he mourns for an eternity. Only very, very rarely in the current market is the vampire cured of vampirism through love of a good woman.
Werewolf (or other animal-human hybrid or shapeshifter): Usually the conflict here involves the acceptance of the other, with a real world correlation of marrying into a different culture. The human has to learn to accept the pack and pack ways, or vice versa. Sometimes the human is turned into a werewolf, too, but most often, they just go on with their lives, with the understanding that occasionally, dude’s going to shapeshift. Ditto with the aliens.
Demon (or Angel): Same problem as vampires, but the guy is usually “cured” and turned into a human.
Time Traveler: It varies. Most often, the time traveler returns to the present, person from the past in tow. Occasionally, the time traveler ends up with a descendant or reincarnation of their old love in some sort of strange, last-minute switcheroo. Rarely does the time traveler stay in the past with their lover.
Time travel tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth because of the commonly-used reincarnation trope. I was talking to my friend Julie Leto about this the other day, and she said the problem was, if you marry the reincarnation of your medieval Highland warrior, it’s not really him. It’s a dude who grew up in the 80s, listening to rock music and playing Nintendo.
Which leads us to the Ghost Paradox. Ghosts are not a popular trope in the current paranormal romance market, and the reason for that is, there is no “cure” and for the human female to join said ghost, she’d have to die. Doesn’t sound like such a happily-ever-after to me.
But then I read Julie Leto’s newest book, Phantom Pleasures, in which she solves The Ghost Paradox. The hero of the book is a spectral, magic-wielding being from centuries past, but he’s not dead. He’s cursed, thereby allowing for the “ghost” trope without that sticky insurmountable conflict biting you in the end. Brill, huh?
I’m giving away copies of Phantom Pleasures this week. To win today’s copy, leave a comment to this post saying what your favorite type of paranormal romance is and why.
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