Paranormal romance is a sub-genre of speculative fiction and romantic fiction focusing on relationships with and/or between vampires, demons, witches, shifters, psychics, and other inhuman beings.
While some paranormal stories use traditional lore for legendary creatures, others explore new ways of interpreting and interacting with them. Many paranormal romance tales also include adventure, mystery, drama, and suspense.
I enjoy reading and writing in the paranormal romance sub-genre because it often includes archetypes – universal symbolic imagery from collective experience hidden in the subconscious. Storytelling has remained a popular, and necessary, form of sharing information because it connects with us on a deeper level, archetypes being one of the main ways.
Through the paranormal, I can address social concerns, process trauma, and explore possibilities in a fictional setting with larger-than-life characters that reach into the subconscious, helping to create connection and foster empathy in real life.
You can see some of this in my story Fate, Frankincense and Funerals. I didn’t consciously intend for it to be a social commentary, but because I write intuitively, these things show up – often with spiritual undertones.
In my more recent work (The Cursed series), you can see where I am exploring the idea of trauma responses and working through things that have left significant scars in their wake. Again, not something I specifically set out to do, but these are the things the characters came to me with, and it’s important. Many paranormal characters are created to be overpowered, and while mine do have super-human abilities in many ways, they are also dealing with very human experiences.
So, while my intention is to write for entertainment, there are often other layers at work in a story – most of the time I don’t even know they’re there until I get to the edits stage and start reading deeper into the draft. I think that’s why some people who have never been a fan of paranormal romance have found my stories enjoyable. It’s more than just the surly, possessive alpha male seen in the myriads of stories out there. There’s something magic in my words that I can never quite pin down. It’s something otherworldly – which is pretty on-brand for the paranormal.
New to paranormal romance? Try some of these: