Tag Archives: Paranormal Romance

The Beginning and the Ending

by Crymsyn Hart 

Some writers find it hard to start a book. The first sentence or the first paragraph can even the worst thing to write. The author has so many wonderful ideas that you have to find just the right starting point. Do you jump into the middle of a scene? Do you start off with dialogue? Do you begin with describing the scene and setting up the reader to delve into the world of the characters that the writer has set up? Or sometimes it is the easier thing for the writer to delve directly into the first chapter and get into the thick of things.

For me, it is easier to jump right into the thick of things. I love that my characters are in the middle of something so the reader starts off with a bang. Of course I then go into the description of my characters and the scene and the story line that begins to unfold. But then again this also depends on how long the work I am going for is as well. If I’m writing something short, then diving head first is a good thing. If I am going for the longer work, then I set up the scene and keep on going. It all depends on the work.

Now it comes to the ending. Endings can go either way. They can be tied up in a neat little bow or they can leave a few loose ends to be extended into the next book of a series. However, I don’t seem to have a problem with the endings. Just sometimes the characters don’t want to end a book the way I want it to. In the romance genre, people expect there to be a happily ever after ending or at least a happy for now ending. Sometimes it’s hard to think of that kind of stretch, but that is what romance endings are for. For the reader to escape into a world and that the endings will be happy. Who wants the couples breaking up right at the very end when they have spent the whole book watching them get together?

Whether the beginning or the ending is the hardest for the writer to put down, it is the author who has to struggle through placing the words and hope that all ends or begins the way the author wants it to.

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What is Paranormal Romance?

by Crymsyn Hart

What is Paranormal Romance besides it being a subgenre of romantic fiction?

Paranormal is considered to be “beyond” the normal world, supernatural and something that science can’t explain. And romance would be a relationship between two or more characters and the feelings that develop between them.  To me, at least, this is what the phrase entails. Now, you throw in a little bit of spice, a vampire or two, or a hunky shifter and to me that is paranormal romance.

While I love a good vampire book that might not have a happy ending, most romance novels end with a happy ever after or a happy for now ending. I write both the HEA and HFN, sometimes, as I reader, I really want to read that horrible ending where everything doesn’t turn out all right and there are a few dangling strings that keep me wondering and on the edge of my seat. But that is my opinion and with five bookcases bursting with books that are mostly vampire novels across all genres, it seems most of the books end with the happy endings, except the horror ones.  Even I am not immune to those novels.

Reading paranormal romance novels are like candy, I read one and then I can’t wait to get my hands on another one. My sub genre of choice within the paranormal realm is vampires. I enjoy the bloodsucking fiends more than any other creature.  The dark immortals who prey on the blood of virgins only to find themselves falling hopelessly in love with one of their victims. Or the lustful seductress who stalks the clerk at her local blood bank only to rescue him from some dark fate that he is being hunted by the local vampire mob boss because he has uncovered some dirty secret.  Together they fall madly in love, embark on a few sexual escapades in between the assassination attempts on their lives, and then end up happily ever after living together until the next disaster comes along and a sequel has to be written.

So besides my explanation of what paranormal romance is, what do you define it as? What draws you into the world of the supernatural? Is it the luscious descriptions of the heroes that makes you delve into the pages? Or is it something more?

If you are like me, then it is more than that. It is the idea that I can put myself into the shoes of the main characters and live through their eyes even if it is for the briefest time of being between the pages. As I said before, books are like candy to me. I open them, get sucked into the sweetness of the story, and then before I know it, time has melted away and the real world has returned because the book is done.

So tell me, what pulls you toward the romance and the paranormal? Hopefully, it’s the sweet taste of the world the author has written and you just want to come back again and again.

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