Influences, Categories, and Pushing Boundaries
I'm in the middle of developing
The Vampire's Favorite
, which is officially on my schedule to write beginning February 1st. Last night, after completing one scene of another story and two scenes from a third (those last two written under my other pen name), I went to bed, and for some odd reason, my mind was drawn to TVF. A couple of days ago, I jotted down a few opening lines for Chapter 1. Once I was in bed, though, it hit me that I was starting the story all wrong. An entire prologue spooled out in my head, so I hopped out of bed, grabbed my laptop, and two hours later, had a really great scene written.
Only problem? It pushes a few boundaries most people aren't comfortable being that close to. My alpha reader-slash-final editor (AR/FE) said that he got distracted counting the number of felonies committed in the Prologue alone, so much so that he couldn't concentrate on the story. (He's a lawyer by day, so maybe that explains it.) I shot back my usual response: I follow the story. That scene, the one outlined in the Prologue, was a pivotal moment in Jason's life. If he'd chosen another action, his life would've taken a radically different path, maybe one far worse than the one he committed to that day. He'd probably have stayed in Minnesota and never would've met Gianna and Eric, and the story told in The Vampire's Pet would never have turned out the way it did.
My AR/FE is often disturbed by the stories I write under this pen name, perhaps because he's not a regular reader of erotic dark fantasy. He and I have often discussed how the stories set in the world of the Vampyr aren't really paranormal romances (which is how I have most of them categorized on Amazon), even though they contain strong romantic elements. And they're not really dark fantasy; there's just not enough horror in them (though there probably will be in TVF). They're not exactly erotica either; the sex is a by-product of the story, not the other way around, as per usual in erotica.
I've been struggling for months as to where these stories should be placed and how they should be categorized. I'm sure I've discussed that before somewhere. It worries me precisely because I know some readers of paranormal romance will be completely turned away from the stories by the explicit, rough sex, some of which skirts quite a few boundaries in its own right. I worry because I want readers who will click with the stories to find them, and while that's slowly happening, I always feel as if I simply don't have them placed where they need to be in order to attract those readers.
Are these stories disturbing? Oh, yeah, and they do test a few boundaries, though no more than anything else that's ever been published. Growing up, I read widely, but much of my reading material was chosen because it was readily at hand. So, I read a lot of what my parents were reading, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Louis L'amour, Zane Grey, V.C. Andrews, and a handful of "women's fiction" (Danielle Steel and the like) that my mother kept on hand; also Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte's Web, and so on. At my maternal grandmother's, I read everything from Plato to Biblical commentary to classic literature (what college students in the 1930s would've read), and at my paternal grandmother's, I read Ellery Queen, Edgar Rice Burroughs and all those old pulp SciFi writers, Pearl S. Buck, and goodness only knows what else. From my school and public libraries, I plucked Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Heinlein, Hubbard, A Wrinkle in Time, C.S. Lewis...
Let's just say, I read a lot, pretty much every moment I was awake. I wasn't a picky reader back then. Remember those ChildCraft Encyclopedias? We had a set. I read them all, cover to cover. (Yes, I know. That's kinda sad.) I spent my childhood reading and loved every moment I was immersed in a book, even the ones that scared the bejesus out of me, maybe especially those.
And maybe that's why I feel so comfortable writing the stories I do. I grew up believing that there was no taboo the mind couldn't explore, that one's imagination should have few, if any, limits. Hey, I read Andrews' Flowers in the Attic and Heinlein's Friday before my 13th birthday, and those were mild by comparison to some of the things I've read, before, during, and since. What happens within Vampyr society isn't that big of an eye-blinker when placed side-by-side with my pre-teen and teenage reading material.
This afternoon, I moved The Vampire's Pet into erotica on Amazon. It's well in line with other dark erotica novels, like Joey W. Hill's Vampire Queen Series, some of J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books, and so on, the big difference being the emphasis the Vampyr stories have on multiple partner sex. We'll see how TVP does in erotica. In the meantime, I'm going to continue writing TVF based on the Prologue as it is now. Hopefully, my regular readers, at least, will understand why it's there.
Only problem? It pushes a few boundaries most people aren't comfortable being that close to. My alpha reader-slash-final editor (AR/FE) said that he got distracted counting the number of felonies committed in the Prologue alone, so much so that he couldn't concentrate on the story. (He's a lawyer by day, so maybe that explains it.) I shot back my usual response: I follow the story. That scene, the one outlined in the Prologue, was a pivotal moment in Jason's life. If he'd chosen another action, his life would've taken a radically different path, maybe one far worse than the one he committed to that day. He'd probably have stayed in Minnesota and never would've met Gianna and Eric, and the story told in The Vampire's Pet would never have turned out the way it did.
My AR/FE is often disturbed by the stories I write under this pen name, perhaps because he's not a regular reader of erotic dark fantasy. He and I have often discussed how the stories set in the world of the Vampyr aren't really paranormal romances (which is how I have most of them categorized on Amazon), even though they contain strong romantic elements. And they're not really dark fantasy; there's just not enough horror in them (though there probably will be in TVF). They're not exactly erotica either; the sex is a by-product of the story, not the other way around, as per usual in erotica.
I've been struggling for months as to where these stories should be placed and how they should be categorized. I'm sure I've discussed that before somewhere. It worries me precisely because I know some readers of paranormal romance will be completely turned away from the stories by the explicit, rough sex, some of which skirts quite a few boundaries in its own right. I worry because I want readers who will click with the stories to find them, and while that's slowly happening, I always feel as if I simply don't have them placed where they need to be in order to attract those readers.
Are these stories disturbing? Oh, yeah, and they do test a few boundaries, though no more than anything else that's ever been published. Growing up, I read widely, but much of my reading material was chosen because it was readily at hand. So, I read a lot of what my parents were reading, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Louis L'amour, Zane Grey, V.C. Andrews, and a handful of "women's fiction" (Danielle Steel and the like) that my mother kept on hand; also Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte's Web, and so on. At my maternal grandmother's, I read everything from Plato to Biblical commentary to classic literature (what college students in the 1930s would've read), and at my paternal grandmother's, I read Ellery Queen, Edgar Rice Burroughs and all those old pulp SciFi writers, Pearl S. Buck, and goodness only knows what else. From my school and public libraries, I plucked Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Heinlein, Hubbard, A Wrinkle in Time, C.S. Lewis...
Let's just say, I read a lot, pretty much every moment I was awake. I wasn't a picky reader back then. Remember those ChildCraft Encyclopedias? We had a set. I read them all, cover to cover. (Yes, I know. That's kinda sad.) I spent my childhood reading and loved every moment I was immersed in a book, even the ones that scared the bejesus out of me, maybe especially those.
And maybe that's why I feel so comfortable writing the stories I do. I grew up believing that there was no taboo the mind couldn't explore, that one's imagination should have few, if any, limits. Hey, I read Andrews' Flowers in the Attic and Heinlein's Friday before my 13th birthday, and those were mild by comparison to some of the things I've read, before, during, and since. What happens within Vampyr society isn't that big of an eye-blinker when placed side-by-side with my pre-teen and teenage reading material.
This afternoon, I moved The Vampire's Pet into erotica on Amazon. It's well in line with other dark erotica novels, like Joey W. Hill's Vampire Queen Series, some of J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books, and so on, the big difference being the emphasis the Vampyr stories have on multiple partner sex. We'll see how TVP does in erotica. In the meantime, I'm going to continue writing TVF based on the Prologue as it is now. Hopefully, my regular readers, at least, will understand why it's there.
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