I’ve got a questions for everyone to start this blog off…what do you consider paranormal?
I’ve been wrestling with this concept for a few years now. My very first writing class, at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Pittsburgh, 2008…I talked with Judi McCoy, the instructor, about this topic. I had a finished book…and she wanted to know what genre it was. Our convo went something like this…
“…well, the main character is a witch…”
“Paranormal!” (triumphant Judi)
“…who can travel through time and space…”
“Science Fiction!” (brow wrinkled Judi)
“…who restores her magical power through sex…”
“Erotica?” (blinking Judi)
“…who lands in Port Royal during the golden age of piracy…”
“…historical?” Judi shook her head.
I ended up pretty confused myself and simply kept writing, and not trying to understand. I sorta knew science fiction/fantasy as a long time reader and attendee of science fiction/fantasy conventions. I knew that including sex and romance into scifi was the kiss of death. (I think that has changed and was changing back then, but I only knew what I knew.) (Which wasn’t much, come to think of it.)
I still have that book, it’s a nice fat series and one day, it will be published and I will go on to conquer the world! BWAH HA HA!
Meanwhile, I kept writing and founded my personal quirky genre, I call piratepunk. I mean, steampunk had risen to some level of recognition, but I didn’t quite write steampunk. Not enough steam. But punk? Well, if you consider punk a bit like the character in Shakespeare, Puck…then yeah, it works. I don’t do much with mohawks, bodypiercing or headpounding, but I might change a character’s head into that of an ass, given a chance. Maybe it should be piratepuck?
*grin
Still, for my publisher I had to fit into an existing genre…and the one that fit better than most, was paranormal. There are vampires and werewolves and zombies…granted, they are pretty much just normal people with odd appetites and no one blinks twice at them in the Tortuga I created for my Kraken’s Caribbean books…but they are there. Along with a matchmaking albino Kraken who guards his Caribbean (when not playing cupid.)
Genre…it’s a very fluid thing! What are your thoughts on it?
And for fun… An excerpt from the first in the the Kraken’s Caribbean series… The Kraken’s Mirror, where my hero, Captain Silvestri prepares a spell, asking for the Kraken’s help. And finds it…
…..
A sliver of moon rose from the sea as he walked into the surf. The water chilled him slightly, but nothing like the nightmare the night Emily held him. He’d seen her, Glacious. A frost appeared on the glass and her eyes studied him. Studied them.
He shook the memory off, praying it had been nothing more than a lingering effect from the nightmare. He walked until the water hit him below his waist and stopped. He held the mirror flat, barely above the water, as Mama Lu told him. A ripple of water reached for it, which was certainly strange. Well, spells should be unusual. He lowered it minutely, and the next ripple kissed the mirror, stirred the powder Mama Lu told him to sprinkle atop the rest.
A ripple flowed away from him, counter to the sea’s course. It disappeared toward the horizon, barely visible in the bare light of a crescent moon. And he waited. Mama Lu said to be patient.
“Ya gonna get a sign. Some message or vision ’bout what way ta go. Wait for it!”
He heard her melodic cadence even now, floating above the sea. The quiet of the night, the lack of any breeze, nothing stirred the trees at his back. No birds called. He looked up at the stars; they blazed down at him.
He sighed and turned his head back to the horizon.
He fought the instinct to scramble away from the great, bulky head of the albino Kraken, not three feet from him, bobbing above the waterline. He swallowed and mastered his fear, while his heart galloped loud enough for the world to hear.
