"Tall Dark and Paranormal" boxed set.(Photo: Tall Dark and Paranormal authors)
What do you get when you put together 10 superawesome authors of 10 paranormal stories with everything from werewolves to vampires, ghosts to demons, and witches to wizards? The Tall, Dark and Paranormal boxed set and 10 great reasons we all still love paranormal romance! Here are their favorite reasons:
Lori Handeland, author of Crescent Moon
When I was very small, my mother worked nights. She still tells the story of coming home late and seeing the TV light wash over me and my dad on the couch as we watched Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. My first stories were of the bizarre and the mystical. When I got a little older, adding a romance to my imaginings made them just right. The more difficult it is for the lovers to find their HEA (and being something other than human adds a lot of obstacles) the better I like it. If my gargoyle hero or werewolf heroine can find love and happiness, everyone can. It's a beautiful message. Now that my dad is gone, I love the memory of that couch, a wash of silver-blue light and sharing those stories with him.
Laura Kaye, author of Forever Freed
Paranormal romance was my first love as a reader and a writer, which explains why my vampire romance Forever Freed was my first novel! I have always loved paranormal romance — and always will — because anything goes. The author can take you on a magical, otherworldly experience and immerse you in it and make you believe it's real. As someone who grew up believing in ghosts, angels, and evil-eye curses and heard stories about them around my grandmother's dinner table, I love imagining that the world of the supernatural is really all around us. Paranormal romance gives me that fantasy!
Caridad Pineiro, author of Sins of the Flesh
I didn't fall in love with paranormal romance until I was older. I was actually the kind of kid that couldn't watch anything scary because I'd have terrible nightmares! But as I grew older, I realized just how interesting the monsters were and how writing about them let me explore all kinds of human emotions and issues. I also realized just how many different stories I could write due to the diversity that exists in the paranormal romance world. Plus, it's so much fun to see the different worlds and characters that can exist in paranormal romances. I guess that's why I love the genre!
Stephanie Julian, author of Spell Bound
Paranormals take me to a world where magic is real. Whether it's vampires or shifters or witches or fairies, I enjoy the "otherness." In sixth grade, I cut my teeth on King and Tolkien. In high school, I discovered Anne Rice and J. Sheridan Le Fanu. In college, I devoured Mary Shelley and Wilkie Collins. In my 20s, I discovered Robert Jordan. Then one day I found Maggie Shayne's Wings in the Night series from Silhouette Shadows and my true love affair with paranormal romance began.
Opal Carew, author of Spellbound
When I think of paranormal romances, I don't always think of dark, scary stories with ghosts and vampires. I think of fictional worlds where things aren't as they seem, and where anything can happen. That appeals to me. Which makes sense, because I'm the kind of person who hates living by rules.
I've always loved magic. Genies, wizards, witches, you name it. When I wrote my story, Spellbound, I decided to put my wizard heroine, Lucinda, in a situation where she finds she must question everything she thought she knew about her life and the world around her as the story unfolds. The result is a fun ride for the reader because nothing is as it appears.
"Tall Dark and Paranormal" boxed set.(Photo: Tall Dark and Paranormal authors)
Randi Alexander, author of Haunting a Cowboy
When I wrote my first cowboy vampire story, I enjoyed creating the dark world so much, I planned a whole series of books based on it. That short story finaled in a contest, which told me that others liked the paranormal side of my writing, too. In Haunting a Cowboy, I found that lite paranormal could be just as exciting as the darker side of the genre. Researching the supernatural gift of ghost whispering was inspirational and eye-opening. Of course, now I keep thinking I'm sensing ghostly presence all the time!
Terry Spear, author of Huntress for Hire
I read ghost stories and my first shapeshifter story when I was young. Then my mother took me to see Dracula at a college play when I was 13. I fell in love with him and wanted him to bite me and live Happily Ever After. My parents were big horror-story fanatics, but I love romance and a HEA. And so from then on, I began writing about those sexy bad boys we all love — the vampires, werewolves and more, to show they need and deserve loving too. And their heroines are every bit a match for them!
Paige Tyler, author of Dead Sexy
If I made a list of my favorite TV shows, it would be filled with paranormal ones — Supernatural (love me some Sam and Dean), Buffy and Angel (love me some David Boreanaz, too), Charmed, Teen Wolf (two words — Tyler Hoechlin, aka werewolf Derek Hale), even Monster High (oh, Clawd Wolf). The thing I love about paranormal romance is that it's a limitless genre. The hero can be anything from a werewolf or vampire to an angel or demon. Or, as in my book, Dead Sexy, even a zombie! The other fun thing is creating the world where these heroes live. There are no boundaries as to where your imagination can wander!
Sara Humphreys, author of Asmodeus: Demon of Lust
When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with soap operas and Star Trek! I loved the romance, drama, and happily ever afters (for now) in the soaps and Star Trek fed the sci-fi fantasy geek inside me. If you put those two things together ... you get paranormal romance. Lori Handeland was one of the first PNR authors I read and I couldn't get enough of her Nightcreature novels. (To say that I'm fan-girling right now because one of my books is in this box set with one of her books ... would be a colossal understatement!) Paranormal romances pair up hunky alpha heroes with spunky sassy heroines who can go toe to toe with the guys and to me, that is sexy. I love escaping into paranormal worlds and when that's combined with true love and a happily ever after … le sigh … give me more!
Judi Fennell, author of Beauty and the Best
My love of paranormal and romance comes from an early age: I fell in love with the classics as a kid: The Wizard of Oz, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Toss in a good helping of Disney fairy tales and it's no wonder that my first published novel was a twist on The Little Mermaid where the hero was a merman and the heroine was a mortal woman who was afraid of the ocean. I'd written it as part of my Once-Upon-A-Romance Series, which included another twisted fairy tale: Beauty and the Best. Fairy tales, magic wishes, and a dash of humor, I fell in love with my tortured hero and had to give him a heroine who could heal him. One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere asks Julia Roberts at the end what happens after the prince rescues the princess and she says, "She rescues him right back." Pretty much sums up the way I feel about my romances: Love conquers all.
What do you love most about paranormal romance?
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