Vampires. Bear Shifters. Oh, My!

My Top 3 Paranormal Romance Covers

 

Love. Love. Love. Paranormal romance. Don’t write it. Wouldn’t know where to start but I love a good sexy vampire. Or hairy werewolf shifter.

This subgenre of fiction has been around for a long time. Can you say Frankenstein or Dracula? It ran hot and cold. For our purposes, paranormal really started take off in the 1990s. They called alternate universe at first.

Yeah, the wasn’t gonna work.

I’m tell you, it may just be the hottest corner of the romance novel world. Readers can’t seem to get enough of those crazy, sexy, angsty stories. I mean to quote the resident historian of romance, Kathryn Falk, the subgenre includes everything from fairies and ghosts to the aforementioned vampires and werewolves.

Basically, the gothic novels of the 18th Century. If you want to get a sense of how the late Enlightenment gals were rocking it with paranormal romance check out Ann Radcliffe. We don’t much remember her today but she was huge back in the day.

Totally gothic and dark with a touch of the sexy-damsel-in-distress thing going and even the touch of the mysterious. That’s cool. Her masterpiece, so to speak, is considered The Mysteries of Udolpho and it’s got plenty of supernatural in it. Definitely worth checking out if you want to get a sense of where paranormal got it’s start.

You know guys know I love this stuff because we think we’re so modern and smart but the old-school crowd were digging this stuff way back when.

The Rise of the Bodice Ripper

Ann Radcliffe was the Stephen King of her day. No doubt. But romance and the funky supernatural stuff quickly became the domain of female readers. So naturally men turned up their noses and started denigrating the whole thing.

It’s pretty much been the case ever since.

The tropes that we love in romance pretty much developed in the 1800s. Jane Austen blew everybody of the water with Pride and Prejudice. Romance authors are still trying to imitate her with Regency romances such is the shadow that boss lady casts. It’s hugely popular niche within romance. Thank you, Jane.

So the romance novel gets kind of trashed through most of the 19th and 20th century. The term “bodice ripper” doesn’t come around until the 1980s but the idea reigns supreme among the literati.

And we go right on enjoying and loving our books. Then 1973 happens. Anne Rice.  (What is it with all these Annes?) She publishes Interview with the Vampire. The runaway success of that book opened the door to all sorts of vampires and shape shifters and all the rest we see on the Kindle store today.

It’s generally acknowledged that the first supernatural time travel hero as romantic partner appeared in Harlequin’s The Ivory Key by Rita Clay Estrada in 1987.

And the race was on to get in on the sexy supernatural dude action.

Yum!

The big publishing houses didn’t skip a beat. By the 1990s, you had writers opening new avenues for what would be known as PNR. Maggie Shayne was doing the whole vampire thing with Twilight Phantasies. Magic was all the rage, including Moonlight and Magic by Rebecca Paisley.

And then Amazon burst on the scene. It has taken the sub-genre to new heights. It’s otherworldly how many people read paranormal romance today 😊.

A Reader’s Guide

Before I get to my greatest joy, the book covers, I gotta get you newbies PNR oriented.

Seriously.

I’m not widely read in PNR. Straight out. I’m more contemporary romance and rom com. That’s what I write. That’s what I love. But I loves me some PNR on a dark and stormy night. Know what I’m sayin’?

All right. If you want to get pure PNR and see what all the fuss is about. I’d have you read the following three books. There the purest form of what PNR is today. You just can’t go wrong.

My Top Paranormal Covers

As always, this is totally subjective. I’m definitely open to your suggestions. Let us all know which PNR covers rock your boat. Here are three of my favorites of recent years. Maybe one of these days I’ll showcase some oldies but goodies.

So here we go.

No. 3

Just for sheer naughtiness, I gotta give it to Lori Handeland. I mean, come on. Wow. This night creature hunk needs to pull up his pants. Or not. I love nontraditional heroes in my romance reads and Lori Handeland really hit it out of the park with Blue Moon. And the cover (once you look up) does a great job of communicating the theme and supernatural elements. Yeah, really. Blue moons are classic PNR.

2.

In my mind, the afore referenced Kresley Cole is the best pound-for-pound writer of paranormal romance there is out there. How the woman does it, I don’t know. And check out her Amazon author page with all her covers. Superb. Her covers just speak for themselves. Suffice it to say, I wish I had her talent and her cover designers.

1.

I love this cover. Not much to say, really. This could be on the ceiling of a 15th century cathedral in Spain somewhere. The fallen angel. Even the clouds are angry with him. I’m actually not a fun of the typeface for the title. But who cares? The image is so fluid and there’s so much motion to it. That’s one thing you don’t get too much in romance covers. Motion. There used to be much more of it in the old days. But hush, hush gets it.  In a big way.