'Scuse Me, There's an Alien in My Paranormal

When I was back in the idea stage of my novel ExtraNormal, I very comfortably considered the genre to be YA paranormal romance. I worked on it for months with that in mind. It wasn't until I got into the marketing stage that I realized my choice of genres might be a tad bit scandalous. Okay, maybe not scandalous. But at least not completely black and white.

My first hint was when I started a search for bloggers and book groups who follow paranormal romance. I came across greetings that went something like this: "This group is for fans of romance books that feature werewolves, vampires, fairies, angels, shape shifters, mermaids, mermen, monsters, robots, Bigfoot, ghosts, creepy clowns, telepaths, unicorns, purple frogs, pink furry bunnies, and gnomes.

Seriously there was one group that had an entire page with links of each category like the ones listed above. Like fifty of them. And do you think one of those links was aliens? Or even extraterrestrials? Nope. Tooth fairy yes. Aliens no.

I have to admit that at first I was a little huffy.

I mean, like, what the? Are they saying they don't like aliens or what? We're talking PARANORMAL here! P-A-R-A-N-O-R-M-A-L. The word was made popular during the whole Roswell controversy thing many many decades ago. We all know what that is, right? Little green men supposedly came for a visit and the government supposedly covered it up. People converged on the place. Groups were formed dedicated to uncovering the truth. Paranormal groups. Ask anybody. Aliens are paranormal. They just are.


 I pranced around all wanting to pick a fight like that for a while. But then my rational side kicked in and I decided I'd better calmly figure this thing out. So I did a search for aliens in paranormal romance, and came up with group discussions that went like this: 
Q: Are there any good paranormal romance books that have aliens?A: Uh, no. You'll have to look for futuristic romance.
Or 
Q: I'm trying to find a paranormal romance with aliens.A: I think you mean science fiction. Bozo.
And on it went. (By the way, while I have no problem with the genre of science fiction, it is not my genre. And while I might kind of like Star Wars, and even possibly Star Trek, it's just not where I hang. That's my husband's domain (A computer programmer, of course. Not that that's geeky. It's actually very sexy. Even if he does watch Doctor Who incessantly.) But I digress, and I'm in double parenthesis, which is always a bad idea. But my point is science fiction is not my first choice in genre labels. And the futuristic thing? Well, ExtraNormal is contemporary, so that doesn't work.)
Plus, I really really like the term paranormal romance because it fits so well with the title. I mean, consider which of these you'd read: 
"Science fiction romance ExtraNormal" 
vs 
"ExtraNormal, a paranormal romance". 
No contest, right? I'd totally rather read the second one. Especially if you read it in a deep, dark sexy and mysterious voice. Try it again. Good, hah?
So what's a girl to do? 

More research, of course.

Wikipedia puts paranormal activity into three camps: ghosts & other spiritual creatures; aliens or extraterrestrials; and what they call cryptics, which is basically anything else mysterious. So if aliens are one of three categories of paranormal, why aren't they more accepted in the genre of paranormal romance?

That is the big question. Can aliens fit into the genre of paranormal romance? Is the reason they don't have a strong showing just that the good books haven't been written yet? (Host is the one book that came up frequently in my searches, but interestingly it's not young adult.) Could there be a of a turn off of aliens combined with romance? (I can see how that could make you go eww. But more so than hooking up with cold pale vampires or Bigfoot?) Are aliens suffering from a deep underlying prejudice within our very own society? Can werewolves and monsters be accepted into mainstream but aliens are just too green and creepy?

I don't know. But as an author, my biggest worry is that a fan of paranormal romance will pick up my book and be disappointed with it, simply because the main character is an alien. Honestly, no author wants a reader to be disappointed.

So I'm calling out to all two of you who might stumble across this blog (It's new, the book's new, what can I say?) to answer the questions above.

If you answer please also tell me if it would make any difference to know that my alien, Mira, is not a traditional alien. She is technically from another planet, (a fairly messed up planet) but the folks on her world have the same DNA as the folks on our world. They do have some neat abilities, that one might call telepathy, except Mira doesn't like to call it that since telepathy is unexplained communication and her streaming is just a science-based form of communicating that the folks on our planet haven't figured out. Yet.

Oh, and it's cool.  A cool book with a cool story. And a cool alien.

So there.