My first paranormal romance I ever read was a time travel--Johanna Lindsey's Until Forever. I read that in a day. I was so absorbed. It was funny and sweet and the hero, Thorn, was to die for. Since that book, I was obsessed to read paranormal romances. And believe me, at the time, they were few and far between.
I still love time travel romances. I wrote three (one will NEVER see the light of day unless I do a MAJOR rewrite from scratch). Two are published--one of which is Sea Hawk's Mistress.
What is it about time travel romance that sparks my interest? I think it is the concept of the "what if" that attracts me. What if a woman travels to Ancient Rome and is led to a gladiator who is charged to pleasure her for the evening? What if a woman travels back to a time when pirates sailed the Caribbean? How would they all react? Could she get on with her life within a different time? Can he come to believe she traveled back in time? See...so many questions. Nice conflicts already built in. I think also the idea of traveling to a different time is highly interesting.
There are different ways to address the plot device of time travel. You can have literal physical traveling back in time through an accident or a magical item. The magical item is highly popular in romance I noticed. I admit, I did the same in Sea Hawk's Mistress when Shelley (cool trivia here: I took the name Shelley from author Shelley Munro. No, I never told her. I am too in awe of her.) finds the Aztec bangle during a dive in the Florida Keys.
Another divice is body switching and reincarnation, which I did in The Gladiator, a book of mine out at New Concepts. I have even seen ghosts used with time travel, I guess to address the whole solid flesh problem.
Since I love time travel and hot sex, why is it so hard to find? It is said time travels never go out of style, but I would love to know where they are. No one seems to be doing them. Is this a dying subgenre of paranormal romance?
If you want a cool time travel with a sexy pirate, please check out Pirate's Mistress (Ellora's Cave, trade paperback-BUY IT) which includes Sea Hawk's Mistress and Crossed Swords, my RT Top Pick historical pirate novel.
Also, if you love paranormal romance, check out Royal Bondage, (Pocket Books, trade paperback-BUY IT) in your local bookstores now. It includes my magical futuristic novella, Scorpion King.
Tomorrow I will be blogging at the Danger Zone at www.dangerzoneauthors.com as my virtual book tour continues.
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8 years ago
3 comments:
I've got Sea Hawk's Mistress and it's awesome! I, too, love time travels. The first romantic time travel I ever saw was Somewhere In Time and I fell in love with the story, Chris Reeve, and Jane Seymour!
What I love most is the contemporary perspective on history. Linda Winstead Jones wrote one called Desperado's Gold for Dorchester and it was fabulous.
Keep writing them because I adore them! I'm working on one myself - an Egyptian time travel and the hero is a hottie!
I agree! I'd love to see more time travel romances like “Sea Hawk's Mistress”! ;-) Or Richard Matheson’s book, “Bid Time Return" (basis for "Somewhere in Time," which also one of my all time favorite films - that unforgettable soundtrack is usually playing on the iPod when I'm writing luv scenes).
But maybe the reason time travel is a scarce sub-genre is that the paradoxical time travel conventions that comprise the crux of the conceptual premise are arguably the toughest fantasy devices of any genre to build credibly and consistently, without some kind of illogical conundrum rearing its ugly head. (Is it just me, or did that sound like Trekkie technobabble? The secondary gyrodyne relays in the propulsion matrix have just depolarized the tachyon field, Mr. Tuvac!)
But whether via magical or scientific devices, the notion of meeting a lover from another time (especially pirate time ;-) and falling love across the ages offers an appeal to readers that is, pardon the pun, timeless. Gimme more!
My agent and I had this discussion, because I, too, write time travel. According to her, the market is soft. You'd never know it from the huge glut of mass media spins on it--Lost, Journeyman, Jumper--but it really has to offer the perfect marriage to something else that IS selling. By the time NY catches up with the rest of the world's fascination with it, readers will feel like they've been-there, done that.
Loved reading your post:) I'm off to pop over to Debra's site...
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