Where’s the Sexy Werewolf?
By Lynne Cantwell
I’m having a hard time classifying my latest
novel.
I had the same problem with the Pipe Woman Chronicles. I began the first
book, Seized, with the intention of
writing an urban fantasy. And so I pegged those five books as urban
fantasy/paranormal romance – and certainly the series has some of the necessary
tropes: a kickass woman as first-person narrator and an urban setting, with a
number of inexplicable occurrences, a few shapeshifters, and a romance. But no
vampires, no werewolves, and no fae. Instead, I brought in a bunch of Native
American mythology and several pantheons of pagan gods. It’s definitely
fantasy, and it’s got that Native American thing going for it. But…gods? How do
you classify gods?
Now I’m writing a sort of spin-off series called Land, Sea, Sky, and I’m having the same
problem. And to make things worse, the first book, Crosswind, doesn’t even have a shapeshifter. Well, unless you count
Loki – but he only appears in a couple of scenes. Instead, I’ve got three
reluctant human heroes, drafted by two goddesses and a god, to stand up to a
being named Lucifer who wants to be a god. Yeah, that Lucifer. Needless to say,
the fate of the world is in balance.
But yeah – no vampires, no werewolves, and no fae.
Just…gods.
Why would I do this? It’s because of what I find
scary about modern life. Let’s take a moment to go back to the literary
antecedents of these scary critters that populate paranormal romance today, and
talk about how they’ve changed.
It’s widely recognized that Bram Stoker’s Dracula wasn’t just about vampires. The
vampire was simply a convenient vehicle for Stoker to write about Victorian-era
sexual repression. The foreign stranger comes uninvited into your home,
violates your chaste woman, and steals her away from you – you get the picture.
It’s all about illicit sex and women as property – highly valued property, but
property nonetheless. So now, today, when readers are no longer titillated by a
little illicit sex, you’ve got to go farther – to vampires who aren’t monsters.
Today’s vampires literally seduce their victims before sticking in their, uh,
fangs. And they have consciences. They’re really kind of okay guys, except with
a dietary quirk and an aversion to sunlight (and some of them don’t even have
that).
Same with werewolves, kind of. In the original
stories, werewolves were tormented beings who struggled with their animal
natures. They played on the classic struggle between man’s natural state, which
was bad, and modern civilization, which was good. It was only a matter of time
(and a few decades) before somebody decided civilization wasn’t all it was
cracked up to be. So now we have stories of werewolves with six-pack abs and
the women who love them.
And about the fae. Legend says the Tuatha de
Danaan were a race of beings who defeated two other races, the Fir Bolg and the
Fomorians, to conquer Ireland. They were, in turn, conquered by the Gaelic
people and disappeared “under the hill,” becoming known as the Sidhe or the
“fair folk” – fairies. The leprechaun was once Lugh, king of the Tuatha de
Danaan and a guy who could literally do anything. Oh, how the mighty have
fallen. No wonder the fae are so cranky now.
So what’s scary in our modern world? Not sex,
certainly, and not getting in touch with our animal natures. What scares me,
personally, is that whole industries are designed to keep us afraid: of other
cultures, of other religions, of somebody taking all our stuff. The captains of
these industries are making a lot of money by scaring us, and then inventing
things for us to buy that give us a false sense of security – false, because
there was nothing to be scared of in the first place.
In Crosswind,
Tess, Sue, and Darrell take up the fight against the fear-mongers in
Washington, D.C. They have otherworldly help in the shape of the gods, and yes,
there’s sex. But no vampires and no werewolves,
sorry.
So is Crosswind
urban fantasy? Paranormal romance? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Blurb
Life
on Earth is much improved since the pagan gods’ return. As conflict eases
around the world, attention — and money — has turned to more humanitarian
goals: improving the lives of the First Nations peoples and others who were
repressed for thousands of years.
But the former ruling class – the military,
religious, and corporate leaders who profited under the old system — are about
to stage a last-ditch effort to bring their good times back.
The gods refuse to start a new war against
those men, because that would make them no better than Their opponents.
Instead, They have drafted three humans to help Them. Together, Tess, Sue and
Darrell must find a way past their own flaws to ensure the gods’ peace will not
be destroyed.
Genre – Urban Fantasy
Pages – approx 275 (68K words)
Published November 20th
Pages – approx 275 (68K words)
Published November 20th
Bio
Lynne
Cantwell has been writing fiction since the second grade, when the kid who sat
in front of her showed her a book he had written, and she thought, “I could do
that.” The result was Susie and the Talking Doll, a picture book,
illustrated by the author, about a girl who owned a doll that not only could
talk, but could carry on conversations. The book had dialogue but no paragraph
breaks. Today, after a twenty-year career in broadcast journalism and a
master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University (or perhaps
despite the master’s degree), Lynne is still writing fantasy. In addition, she
is a contributing author at Indies Unlimited.
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