Whew! Big weekend! I went to Osfest, sat on two panels, hosted another one and, oh yeah, Katie and I put a bid on a house that was accepted! **Continuously dances** No, I’m not telling you where, you creepy internet stalkers. I’m watching you. But not, y’know, in a creepy way. (I’m totally watching you in a creepy way.)<\/p>\n
Annnnnywaaaay…awkward. \u00a0I’ve got more news coming about WordKeeperAlpha but things are probably going to slow down on it for the next couple months, since we’re going to be moving and I’ll have less time for development. \u00a0Trust me though, the next update is going to be HUGE and you’re going to love it. \u00a0Not only am I (again) revamping Goals, but Projects too, and a fair amount of the backend. \u00a0All that is going to lead directly into the social upgrades that I’ve been promising for so long, AND blog integration. \u00a0Also, faster performance. \u00a0It’s going to be super spiffy.<\/p>\n
Completely ignoring the fact that I used the word “spiffy” in a blog post, lets get back to talking about Urban Fantasy vs. Paranormal romance. \u00a0 Once again, full disclaimer, I personally<\/i>\u00a0don’t care much for paranormal romance. \u00a0My word on this is not law, I’m not calling you stupid for locing the crap out of it. \u00a0This is just my personal taste and things that I’ve noticed while sampling (often unwittingly) novels in the genre.<\/p>\n
On the surface, paranormal romance and urban fantasy look exactly like the same genre. \u00a0Both usually feature bad ass (or potentially bad ass) main characters, magic, vampires and or werewolves set in a (mostly) modern setting. \u00a0I think the key difference (big surprise) is the focus on the romantic <\/i>aspect. \u00a0I know, duh. \u00a0But really that’s all that separates them, or seems to be. \u00a0And that, is probably what I don’t like about paranormal romance. \u00a0The question of “Will they, won’t they” is given more precedence than “Dude, that evil wizard is just one sacrifice away from turning the world’s cows into insane werecow super-predators.” \u00a0Or, it will completely leave out the werecow plot (which is just wasting a terrific idea) and focus on the forbidden love between a completely normal woman and a super-hunky but dangerous angel-werewolf hybrid. \u00a0I’m sure that the latter story is fascinating to some people, but I really want to see what happens when the werecows start eating raw people burgers.<\/p>\n
No, I’m not letting that drop and it will go into one of my books someday. \u00a0“Invasion of the Werecows,” New York times #1 best seller!<\/p>\n
Another, in my mind, failing that crops up in paranormal romance is the thrice damned romantic triangle. \u00a0Seriously…how many times does the beautiful Mary Sue character really have to choose between the mysterious vampire hottie and the brooding werewolf hottie? \u00a0Vampire and werewolf are completely interchangeable as well.<\/p>\n
Once again, its not that romance in the story is bad, or that I hate all romantic triangles. \u00a0I’ve read urban fantasies where both are handled expertly. \u00a0Take the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, for instance. \u00a0The first few books deal quite a bit with the romantic traingle between Mercy and two different alpha werewolves, which, just typing it makes me a little queasy. \u00a0But none of the books focus on that. \u00a0Its always a side plot to the main conflict in the book, in some books bigger, in some smaller until eventually it becomes a non-issue. \u00a0Mercy’s main problem in those books is often keeping herself or those she cares about alive, something that she has serious problems with. \u00a0Mercy is a kick-ass heroine who has a well defined character, a standing in the supernatural that makes her believable and relatable and mundane problems to match her supernatural ones. I just wish she didn’t get the shit kicked out of her so often…but that’s kind of what defines her. \u00a0Mercy can take a hit just as well as any of her supernatural friends, sometimes far better. \u00a0Their respect is earned, not magically given because Mercy is just so naturally talented. \u00a0She’s a bad ass, because she can be half murdered, and think herself out of the situation leaving her friends to wonder just how she survived AGAIN. \u00a0Her enemies are fools to mess with her, not because of her power, but because of how many threats she’s not only survived, but dealt with decisively.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’m just talking about good writing versus bad writing. \u00a0Once again, I’m not well read in the official paranormal romance genre, but I’ve come to associate PN with writing that glosses over important character building to focus on the romance aspect instead of the paranormal aspect. \u00a0Is it possible to make the romance the main thrust of the plot and still have it be interesting? \u00a0Yeah, probably so, but I think that would take a defter hand than mine. \u00a0Also, I’m sure that there’s plenty of people who don’t care and just want Bella and Edward to bone in their awkward, completely not messed up way. \u00a0And the people who like that are just fine. \u00a0They know what they like. \u00a0I know what I like. \u00a0Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop ragging on Twilight though. \u00a0You can only expect so much acceptance and tolerance from me.<\/p>\n
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Whew! Big weekend! I went to Osfest, sat on two panels, hosted another one and, oh yeah, Katie and I put a bid on a house that was accepted! **Continuously dances** No, I’m not telling you where, you creepy internet stalkers. I’m watching you. But not, y’know, in a creepy way. (I’m totally watching you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[65,70,100],"class_list":["post-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rant","category-reading","tag-paranormal-romance","tag-rant","tag-what-makes-a-good-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}