megwrites: Beast, from Beauty & The Beast looking coiffed and unhappy. (beauty&thebeast)
Dear Paranormal Romance Writers,

I see that some of you write sex scenes in your books. Good for you! But as a personal favor to your readers, could you maybe not refer to the fluids produced by vagina having folks during arousal as "her cream". Please also do not have the male love interest desire that his penis be "bathed in her cream" during sexual intercourse.

Because honestly, this and all the heavy thrusting you describe make me think that what you are really attempting to do is describe a couple in the throes of churning butter. Butter that is inside a vagina. Because let's face it. Lots of churning + cream = butter. And now I'm thinking of vagina butter.

The sexy: it has fled.

Not for nothing, one of your esteemed colleagues has already invoked in me the image of semen cheese.

So if you are a paranormal novelist who is currently drafting a sex scene, I would take it as an almighty kindness if you would leave things like "milking", "cream" and other dairy related terms RIGHT OUT. In fact, references that can be traced back to a farm at all would really be best left alone.

I'm just sayin'.

Love and Sexy Vampires,
Meg
megwrites: A vertical stack of books, spines facing out leaning against a horizontal stack of books. (things read)
In my ever optimistic quest for a perfect, or at least better paranormal romance/urban fantasy I ran across a short story that was the beginning point for a paranormal romance series.

Being the naive little optimist I am, I dived in. And what did I discover? The heroine of the piece was the Goddess of Oppression, Kadence. (I'm not making a single bit of this up).

Kadence is a gorgeous white woman with long flowing blonde locks, more beautiful than Aphrodite herself (this is literally said), who has the power to take people's free will away from them and make them do what she wants but never seems to think that maybe this power is something she ought to work on CONTROLLING rather than feeling sad that she's stuck in the underworld where she can't suck the life out of people. And her great heroic act is to buy the love of her life from the devil. Yes. Because buying people without their consent and not telling them about it until 3/4ths through the story is a completely an okay thing to do that should make the reader think you're an inherently angelic person.

The Goddess of Oppression, y'all. *nods*.

I read the entire thing, but I did not keep a straight face at all. Because there's just too much unintentional truthiness and irony (in the layman's sense) and all the rest. I just wanted to ask if someone, somewhere was even aware that but for a change in the tone of the piece and a few edits here and there, it could've been the most brilliant satire ever and a scathing, hilarious commentary on the genre.

I think I've officially been broken of my optimism. Anybody have any paranormal romance recs that will restore my faith? Anyone?
megwrites: A vertical stack of books, spines facing out leaning against a horizontal stack of books. (many books)


Title: Seduced by Shadows (Marked Souls, Book 1)
Author: Jessa Slade (JessaSlade.com)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Signet Eclipse Paranormal Romance

Review: Seduced by Shadows )
megwrites: A vertical stack of books, spines facing out leaning against a horizontal stack of books. (many books)



Title: Archangel's Kiss (Guild Hunter Book 2)
Author: Nalini Singh (@nalinisingh; NaliniSingh.com)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Berkley Sensation

Review: Archangel's Kiss. Warning: Spoilers for both the first and second books! )
megwrites: A moon rising above a darkened landscape in front of a starry night sky. (moonrise)
1. I just want to say a big "bless you" to all those authors who put up sample chapters on their sites, and actually start with the first part when they do this. I've come across several authors who want to pull an excerpt from, say, chapter 20 or chapter 10 or some such and I'm like, "THIS DOES NOT HELP ME". The thing is, to understand your book, I need to read it in order. Thus, I need to start from page one. And while chapter 20 may be a page turner, if the first 19 chapters are boring as hell, I'm not going to invest. Which is why I like to start at the beginning. To make sure that your book is giving me a reason to want to read on.

2. I have a really, really evil trouble starting post in my head after seeing some news around the writersphere about a couple of paranormal romance series being discontinued for bad sales according to their authors.

But one in particular really made me want to say some inordinately snarky things. It's not that I relish a fellow writer not meeting with success when they work hard and put their hearts on the line, it's that when said writer pens a book that basically says from front to back, "Sorry, people like YOU aren't good enough to be in this book. People like YOU are too ugly for a Sexy Tiems Paranormal Romance Like This, come back when you're beautiful", I'm not sad to see it leave the shelves. And I feel just a little bit vindicated to know it failed.

The thing is? I'm used to mainstream romance and paranormal romance hating me by exclusion. I'm used to being told I'm not pretty enough because I've got covers and covers and covers of books about skinny heterosexual white chicks staring at me to let me know what is pretty enough. And I've sort of learned to deal and find the hidden gems and live with eternal optimism and not expect too much.

But this book didn't just settle for exclusion, it went right on to face slapping. This one book actually made me leave not just the romance bookshelves (and abandon all the other books I was going to preview and consider buying) but the bookstore. It was during this winter when I was going through a lot of bad mental stuff and there I am, looking for something exciting and fun to read because damn but I needed some relief and *bam*. Hit in the face with the things that have, at times, my made life completely miserable. Things I have to push back against on the daily or cave in to self-harm.

For the moment, I'll table that post because I'm not looking to get into internet drama over it, but one day I may make the post about how writers need to think twice (and thrice) before they decide ignoring big parts of their potential audience is the way to go - because as recent news would seem to bear out, that bigotry isn't working out so well for some people.

3. It being poetry month and me not wanting to post any of my own poems right now, I'll post my favorite Pablo Neruda poem:

Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda


I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
megwrites: Reading girl by Renoir.  (rainbow books)



Title: Gideon (Nightwalkers #2)
Author: Jacquelyn Frank (jacquelynfrank.com*)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Zebra Paranormal Romance

*Reviewers Note: WARNING for the author's site because it loads with a very loud, surprise thunder/lightning noise and the SOUND OFF button is at the BOTTOM of the page and is small and might be hard to find if you've just been nearly given a PANIC ATTACK by a sudden clap of thunder while you have your headphones on listening to quiet music (this happened to me). Very annoying and the thunder is on every single page. And not all pages have a SOUND OFF link. And even if you push SOUND OFF on the front page, it re-loads on subsequent pages. Accessibility and design fail.


Review: Gideon by Jacquelyn Frank. )
megwrites: Picture of books with quote from Cicero: "a room without books is like a body without a soul" (books)



Title: Seduced by Crimson (Crimson City #5)
Author: Jade Lee (jadeleeauthor.com)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 339
Publisher: LoveSpell (Dorchester Publishing)


Review: Seduced by Crimson by Jade Lee. Warning: Spoilers. Trigger Warning: discussions of rape. )

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