“To write a great romance novel, a writer must have the ability to convey emotion. To capture very deep, powerful emotions like love and sorrow and passion and wonder on the page in fresh new ways.” –Barbara Samuel

“Believe me, I’m not the one who needs to be careful.” His voice was sinister as he spoke those words, reinforcing his lethalness.”–Dance with the Devil

“Those trousers could seduce a Templar Grand Master.”–The Highlander’s Touch

As many filed away their rejection letters and publishing companies busied themselves with shit, fake shit, and faker shit, I decided to dedicate this month’s column to the study of romance novels. Of course, I couldn’t just delve into the general genre of flowery covers, corsets and Fabio. No, my bosomy swans, I decided to take on the newest faction of romance: the paranormal.

According to Linda Suzane, author of such memorable works as, Forever Knight : A Stirring of Dust (based on the Canadian TV show about a vampire detective. It’s nice to know the film industry isn’t the only industry creating derivative remakes), the paranormal genre is a, “…very active subgenera of Romance” and “includes a wide range of novels that don’t quite fit into the area of contemporary, romantic suspense, historical romance…” and contain, ” fantasy or science fiction setting, ghosts, witches, demons, or shapeshifters.”

Exhibit #1

So much to choose from! Sex with elves, sex with androids, sex with warlocks, sex with demons, sex with vampires, sex with a demon warlock whose evil brother is a vampire. So for my first reading I settled on a book about a possessed vacuum cleaner some vampire chick has sex with. Of course it hasn’t been written yet. So I settled for Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dance with the Devil.

(You don’t want to search inside…his pants, that is.)

Note the lovely hologram cover and half naked man. This is key, because when you buy a book in public, you want everyone to know you’re a sexless loser who believes in vampires. Unless you can barely contain your laughter when purchasing said item, resulting in an angry glare from the Goth guy working the counter because he thinks you’re making fun of his new mesh shirt. Which I totally wasn’t. Though that looked pretty funny too.

Dance With the Devil is part of a greater story arc known as the “Dark Hunter Series”. Each book is dedicated to a Dark Hunter, which is a rough and tumble warrior from the vampire legions of Artemis. That’s right, Artemis. You may remember her as the Greek goddess of the hunt and fertility. To many she is considered “the goddess of women”. However Kenyon decided to take a different route with Artemis and just turn her into a big whore. I bet she wants to rule the world too. What a whore!

Kenyon is so devoted to her series that she has dedicated an entire website to the wide-ranging storylines, such as this little gem:

“Yeah, yeah. Enough of the doom and gloom because, baby, that ain’t us. You want to know what a Dark-Hunter is? We are what the intro says. We’re Mad, Bad and Immortal. We’re ancient warriors with attitudes who fight rough, and play hard. We are the scary things that go bump in the night. And we love every minute of it. So when you think you’re being watched. You just might be. The question is…is it something evil or is it someone wicked?”

I see. So instead of fearing disease, war or famine–I should be frightened that some man with gelled hair and a love for black is going to break into my house and have sex with me. People with rape fantasies, look no further!

The website also offers stats on the Dark Hunters. For instance, Dark Hunter Acheron was born in 9548 BC and likes to listen to Godsmack. You’d think after all those decades he’d acquire better taste in music.

There is also a mention of “shades” in these books. Which is great because I’m sure it’ll bring in the male-centered D&D fans into this sexy world. They can start by taking the “Squire Quiz” with such questions as “Do you like taking care of gorgeous guys?”, “Does the thought of having a tall, gorgeous guy saving your life make your day?” and “Do you mind staying up all night and “playing” with a gorgeous, tall, sexy man?”. Sherrylin, meet Redundant. Redundant, meet Sherrylin. You’re going to be very happy together.

On to the novel! Dance With the Devil is Zarek’s story, Zarek being a Dark Hunter who is on the run from Dionysus. I guess the god of wine is going to force Zarek to do a keg stand of death or something. Anyways, Zarek ends up in a helicopter flying over Alaska and he’s tuning out from his horrible existence with some rad tunes from his MP3 player and “Yo! Nickleback is some sensitive shit! I love me those bitches! ‘How You Remind Me’ tears my shit up man! But don’t tell anyone because I’m a motherfuckin’ badass!”

The reader gets a sense that Zarek is a man who follows his own rules. He wears leather pants, is a badass, and is sexy as hell. But not like Acheron who also wears leather pants, is a badass, and is sexy as hell. This is because Acheron has long blond hair and Zarek has long black hair. They are not interchangeable characters. At all. Put yourself in the mind of a woman who reads these novels: you’re only interested in finding the porn.

Zarek starts reminiscing about his relationships with women, which isn’t a great idea, since he should be concentrating on trying not to die. “…women had a nasty tendency of viewing sex as meaningful. He didn’t. Sex was sex. It was basic and animalistic. Something the body needed like it needed food. But a guy didn’t have to promise a steak he was going to date it before he ate it” (29).

Something explodes and Zarek ends up in a snowstorm near the helicopter’s fiery crash. I’m hoping he’ll die, even though it’s page twenty-nine, but Zarek runs into a Good Samaritan that doesn’t know he’s a total douche. It’s a beautiful blind girl and she quickly takes Zarek to her remote cabin. The reader comes to find, in sexy dramatic irony, that the woman is actually Astrid, a nymph sent to judge Zarek to see whether his crimes really do deserve punishment.

Astrid is also immortal and she’s been a judge of evil men for years. And guess what?! She’s never known the hot burning touch of a man! Wow! That’s different. Astrid is immediately attracted to Zarek. Why you ask? Duh, because he’s sexy and wearing leather! I mean, he’s rude and barely talks and tries to murder her dog—but he’s sexy! And the leather!

Astrid and Zarek spend most of their time together arguing. Because Zarek is a badass, he has to be irritable all the time, like he uses too many ‘roids or is late for his monthly HIV Test.

“She froze at his sarcasm and glared in his general direction. “You really are an animal, aren’t you?”

“Woof, woof”. (67)

However, Zarek soon shows Astrid his softer side by making her hot chocolate.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Arsenic and vomit.”

Taking a deep breath, she drank the chocolate, which was a perfect temperature and very tasty.

Zarek was amazed at her bravery. So, she had called his bluff and trusted him (76).”

So because she’s blind she can’t differentiate between the odors of chocolate and vomit? Why isn’t this guy dead yet?

Astrid is touched by Zarek’s hot chocolate making and is even more moved when he spends his nights carving figures out of wood. “The man was an extremely talented artist and his talent seemed completely at odds with what she knew about him” (64).

Why at odds? He’s good with a knife because he spent thousands of years killing people and carving up hearts. In Astrid’s line of thinking Ed Gein is just a very talented interior designer.

But no matter. Zarek and Astrid make sweet sweet love and Zarek, who in the beginning of the novel claimed to not even know how to please a woman, suddenly has the gifts of a Casanova. Because he’s in love. And when you’re in love you can do anything. And pleasing a woman is as simple as riding a bike, and a woman is built like a bike, and all women come from the same bicycle factory and are assembled according to strict uniform bike laws.

At the end of the novel, Astrid and Zarek are together forever. There’s really no other mention of vampires again and I’m left alone, bereft and wondering about these leather clad creatures that descended from the ancient line of Euro-Trash.

Exhibit #2

For those who still want their romance with good old fashioned rogues, as well as a little Scots fetish, there’s “The Highlander Series” by Karen Marie Moning. She’s a stronger writer then Kenyon and is the winner of the “prestigious RITA award”. Also, why the fuck does one have to mention that an “award” is “prestigious”—shouldn’t that already be implied if someone wins an award?

Anyways, Moning’s series focuses on magnetic immortal highlanders. Christopher Lambert is never mentioned and I won’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. There’s also a lot of stuff to do with faeries, but I’m not going to believe any man, fictional or otherwise, would want to claim he’s a fairy, unless he’s hanging out at Woody’s and drinking a mojito.

The Highlander series focuses on an unsuspecting modern heroine who, in some twist of fate, runs into a sexy, brawny, sexy, masculine highlander from the past. The girl is perky in dialogue and in the pectoral area. The man is built like a school bus. They spar, but not with spears, which would be great because someone would die. No, they spar verbally, and it’s simply a game to cover their lusty lust for each other. Oh, and also, the female character is always a virgin, unknowing of the hot burning touch of a man. The man, however, has been with so many chicks he probably just has a burning sensation. It’s interesting to note that out of all the romance novels I read, this was the most popular setup. I don’t know what this says about society or the idea of a woman’s sexual fantasies, just that it probably isn’t that simple, nor contains so much variety for the word “wang”.

But let’s get to the story, shall we? In the prologue for The Highlander’s Touch we meet Circenn Brodie, who is “laird and thane of Brodie”; he says “Doona” a lot and wears a kilt, so I assume he’s the hero of the story. He’s in the midst of an argument with Adam Black, “the deadly jester in the Fairy Queen’s court”. He will slay you with his jokes and mock you with his jingle bell hat—of death!

Brodie is pissed because he put a curse on a fairy flask and sent it into the future. I guess the flask has some drug in it, maybe ecstasy, and Adam Black wanted it for his “glitter party”. As a reader I’m completely confused, even more so when the POV switches to Adam Black and his description of Circenn who, “exuded the magnetism of a man born not merely to exist in his world, but to conquer it. Power has never been so seductive, Adam thought, except, perhaps, in me (Prologue).”

Other then questioning the idea of men gathering around and measuring their seductiveness, I thought it funny that someone would think a man who doesn’t even know how to wear pants could possibly rule the world.

After a confusing and slightly homoerotic Prologue, the first chapter and heroine are introduced. Lisa is a twenty-three year old homeless woman living on the cold streets of Cincinnati. Or that’s what some guy in a Mercedes thought after driving by and calling her a bum. “She glanced down at her faded jeans, worn and frayed at the hems. Her white T-shirt, although clean, was soft and thin from hundreds of washings. Maybe her slicker had seen better days, a few years before she’d brought it at Secondhand Sadie’s…her boot had a hole, but he couldn’t have seen that, it was in the sole. The chilly puddles form the recent rain seeped into her boot, soaking her sock.” (1).

Yes, the heroine of this novel dresses like crap. But she has a reason! Her mother is dying of cancer! She has loans! She has debts! She has never heard of a “clothing sale”. But guess what, you guys?! Lisa is the most beautiful hobo girl out there. Her friend Ruby says so, “he must have been gay. That’s the only reason a man could miss a woman as gorgeous as you” (12). But Lisa doesn’t believe Ruby. The reader is then treated to two and a half pages of Lisa describing her sad life and her low self-esteem. Honestly, if I were Ruby I’d tell Lisa to shut the fuck up and go to Macys. That’s what real friends do.

Lisa’s trip down I Hate Myself Lane continues as she goes to her job as a cleaning lady at a museum. She reflects on a time she was at a bar and met a man who was interested in her up to the point that she revealed she was a maid. This is probably the biggest piece of bullshit I have ever read. And that says a lot, because I’ve read Tolstoy. Seriously, no man will turn down a beautiful woman because she works as a cleaning woman. He’ll take her home, bang her and then ask her to scrub his toilet.

Lisa somehow comes upon the fairy flask Circenn was going on about in the prologue. Some sort of debacle happens and she touches it, which sends her back to Circenn’s world. They meet, he’s half naked and she’s still dressed like a hobo. “He was the tallest man she’d ever seen, but his size was not confined to his improbable height. His shoulders were massive (25).” Why the hell are all these men steroids on legs? What woman seriously fantasizes about a man as large as Andre the Giant? Okay I did. But only once. Twice.

“The man dripped such intense sexuality that fantasies of a savage warrior recognizing no law but his own, shivered through her ancestral memory (26).” Her ancestors were warriors she wanted to have sex with? I didn’t know this was a V.C. Andrews book…

Circenn soon realizes that he has to kill Lisa because she has the cursed flask, but she’s pretty hot and he kinda wants to do her. Make her scrub the toilet when you’re done, man!

The POV switches again and it’s Circenn’s turn to bore the reader to death. There’s some back story about the Knights Templar. How this is related to a highlander is unknown to me, but I suppose Ms. Moning was flexing her writing muscles and giving herself a break from writing “darkly seductive” and “dark seductiveness”. Really, what woman would pick up this book looking for a fake history lesson. Where’s the porn?

After locking Lisa in one of the rooms of his massive castle, Circenn decides to kill her. He sneaks into her room but she has set up a booby trap reminiscent of Data from “The Goonies”. He falls and grabs her ankle and then they roll around the floor. “She showed no signs of giving up the fight, and he realized that she would beat at him until she passed out from lack of breath. Since the only part of their respective bodies they both had free were their heads, he did the only thing he could think of—

He head-butts her and cracks her skull?

“He kissed her.”

That’s the lamest strategy ever. Unless his mouth was full of vomit and arsenic…

“It would be impossible for her to head-butt him with her lips pressed against his, and he’d learned long ago that the best way to control a fight was to get as far in his enemy’s space as possible” (50).

So he’s done this before. Scottish men are a strange breed.

Unfortunately, this interesting twist is dropped and we’re left with vanilla hetero action. There’s more stuff on the Knights Templar and incorrect history in general, as well as Lisa and Circenn’s arranged marriage and Lisa missing her mother, Catherine, who of course is dying of cancer. At one point the reader is treated to a scene of Circenn offering himself to Lisa and for her to not be afraid of his lusty lust for her.

“Stand up, Lisa. Take what you want from me. Live now.”

She sat still, his words echoing in her mind. Then another voice startled her, because it sounded so like Catherine’s, resounding in her head: No more punishment. He’s right, you know. Do you think I didn’t see what you were doing to yourself? Live, Lisa. (231).”

And so Circenn gives it to her so well that Lisa’s mother would be proud. That would make a great Hallmark card:

At the end of the book, Lisa and Circenn have returned to the present and are a couple. Circenn soon reveals a secret, “You know now that I am half-fairy, Lisa,” Circenn said gently. “Can you accept that?” (353). Lisa is as comfortable with this revelation as I was when I learned my old boyfriend now goes by Brenda. Lisa also comes to find that she’s pregnant. “I’m pregnant? I’m going to have your baby?” she exclaimed, a shiver of delight racing up her spine (350).” Squeeeeee! Finally her womanly fantasies have been realized! That’s right, Gloria Steinem, take your essays and shove it!

Karen Marie Moning is then nice enough to write a little author’s note. She talks about Catherine’s cervical cancer and how it’s preventable and “we women need to take care of ourselves”. She then instructs the reader to go buy more of her novels. And that Lisa graduated from college and Circenn stays home and pleases her all night long. “After having lived for so many centuries, he is not quite as driven by a thirst for knowledge as Lisa, and instead devotes his days and nights to pleasing his woman”.

Circenn could have spent it finding a cure for cervical cancer. But whatever–there’s orgasms to be had!

Exhibit #3

I found myself, inexplicably wandering back to Sherrilyn Kenyon, like a crack addict who just doesn’t like the taste of freshly churned cocaine.

Dragonswan is only 83 pages long; however, if you remove the words “manly”, “seductive”, and “dark stare”, it ends up being about twenty pages long. The heroine of this classic is Shannon with a “C”, or “Channon”. Since that’s stupid her name stays as Shannon.

Shannon is a lonely woman because she’s intelligent. In the first few pages she has devoted her time to studying an old dragon tapestry. Suddenly a man walks into the room and she is lovestruck.

“Standing at least six feet five, he towered over her average height. His long black hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and he wore an expensively tailored black suit and overcoat that seemed at odds with his unorthodox hair yet perfectly fitting with his regal aura (2).”

How friggin’ short are these women? Are they midgets? Did they not get enough nutrition? Do these men just walk around on stilts? Seriously, a super tall man is not sexy. He can’t get into the door of most restaurants and he has to push his car seat into the trunk because he needs the leg room of a giraffe. The only thing I think about when authors describe “big beefy men” is that I want to throw a couple of these hard bodies together and build a house in the vacant lot next door.

“No doubt he could get any woman who caught his eye. Channon swallowed at the thought as she glanced down at her tan corduroy jumper and her hips, which were not the fashionable, narrow kind. She’d never been the type of woman who drew the notice of a man like this. She’d been lucky if her average looks ever garnered her a second glance at all (3).”

Great, another woman with self-esteem and wish-fulfillment issues, like I didn’t get enough of those types of girls in college who would end up drunk on Jell-O shots and humping some greasy frat boy on a sofa with a treasure trove of condom wrappers and Ruffles chips. There’s nothing sexier, I say!

Except the mysterious man who has graced Shannon with his presence, Sebastian Kattalakis. That’s a fun name to say “Kattalakis”, it’s like a tribal dance for the tongue, which is different then the dance of tongues these two will soon tango themselves into.

“Sebastian didn’t know what it was about this woman that drew him so powerfully. He was involved in grave matters that required his full attention, yet for the life of him, he couldn’t take his gaze from her (5).”

This is what a woman wants. A giant of a man with the ability to tear himself away from grave matters, “grave matters” being “The Rose Bowl”.

Now I know I haven’t included any really steamy scenes in my study. Mostly because I’m a bastard, but partly because romance novels often gloss over realistic details. Therefore I present two paragraphs from Dragonswan, with the real story in parenthesis.

“She wore her honey-brown (dirty blond) hair swept up so that it cascaded in riotous waves (she hasn’t brushed it in days) from a silver clip of old Welsh design (bought it at Wal-Mart). Several strands (hasn’t washed it either) of it had come free of the clip ($2.99 on sale!) to dangle haphazardly around her face as if the strands had a life of their own (because she hasn’t washed them).

How he longed to set free that hair (don’t touch it! it’s oily!) and feel it sliding through is fingers (it’ll slide real well what with all the oil–from the not washing) and brushing against his naked chest (he waxes, it’s manly).

He dropped his gaze down her lush, full body (too many Ho Hos) and stifled his smile. Her dark blue shirt (covered in lint) wasn’t buttoned properly (big milk stain) and her socks didn’t match (laundry day is Tuesday!).

Still, she drove him crazy (mental illness) with desire (heartburn) (6).”

There’s more!

“She brushed her hand against the nape of his neck, sending chills all over his body, making him so hard for her that he throbbed painfully (he should put some IcyHot on that). He closed his eyes while he let all of his senses experience her (all nine of them). Her mouth tasted of honey (she got in the beehive again!), and her hands were soft and warm against his skin. She smelled of woman and flowers…Take her. The animal inside him stirred with a fierce snarl (he ate an animal?). It snapped and clawed at the human part of him (must be a mongoose), demanding he cede his humanity to it. It wanted her…her intensity surrounded her, filled her, made her burn with volcanic need (magma in your uterus is not a good thing) (16-17).”

Conclusion:

Wow, I am spent. So there you have it; this is the New Romance. Sure, it has the clichéd feisty woman, the darkly seductive seducing man and convoluted plots readers all over the world have connected with Old Romance. But this has something that the normal genre doesn’t: Well oiled Samurai Warriors who can levitate objects with their manly buttocks.

I’m writing the sequel right now!

Tags: eileen lavelle

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