k, I'm operating on about 1 hour of sleep here, so if I babble, I'll appologize now.
My paranormal leanings are fairly recent. Until, oh, about 2 years ago, I was strictly a fantasy/sci-fi girl with the odd historical romance tossed in for variety. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I was never a fan of vampires, weres or any usual suspects. In thinking about this, I wondered how I could love fantasy and magic and not care for the same types of story set in our own world.
I blame it on TV.
Ok, I can't completely blame it on TV. The truth is, I don't remember much paranormal TV or books geared towards teens. The 80's and early 90's were full of sitcoms and if there were any movies with para elements, my parents must not have let me near them. By the time Buffy, Angel and Charmed (among others) aired, I was too busy with college to watch much TV.
As for books, the problem might be that paranormal is generally shelved with romance, cause of course there's usually lots of hot nookie in them. Being a teenager, you don't want to be buying YA books (at least I didn't) and I felt...squicky...being infront of the romance shelves (I could borrow them from mum, but buying them was another story.)
Hopefully it'll be different for my kids. Buying books for them I see tons of stories with magic, faeries, etc, and paranormal has made itself known in a big way on the television and big screen. Hopefully it's not a fad, like a lot of people are saying.
So did I just miss out on all the good para TV as a kid? What were your first paranormal books/favorite movies?
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6 comments:
They had a few paranormals when I was young but not many of them had romance and in general the vampire or werewolf was the classical bad guy that had to die. I think the romantic vampire as hero is a fairly recent thing that came about in the last decade or so.
Interesting really, I've always wondered why women find it extremely romantic to have their necks bitten and their blood sucked out :)
S.J.
I read so many books when I was young I can't recall the "firsts", but I think the first TV I watched with spec content was Fantasy Island. And it often had romance, too!
I'm old enough to remember the Dark Shadows tv show! :)
As for movies, one of my favorites is "Practial Magic".
I blame Scooby Doo for my paranormal fixation, for real. I loved that show when I was a kid. Even though they always *spoiler alert* (snicker) proved it was some janitor or professor posing as the ghost, witch or werewolf, I loved it.
As for paranormal tv, hmm, I'm older, so they didn't have any really except Fantasy Island which I watched with my mama, who I think had the hots for Mr. Roark(*gasps* that hussy!). My faves were the tried and true Scifi's like Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, and Dr. Who.
By the time Beauty and the Beast (my hubby's all-time frickin fave!) came out, I'd started dating, so I was too busy to watch it. Now for me it's like a flashback to big rockstar hair and even bigger shoulder pads and that's just on Vincent. OMG!!I've dropped 80's acid, help me I'm trippin! Do I hear Mall Tiffany singing, auugh! Stop the Insanity!
My real paranormal addiction stems from comics. X-men was probably more scifi but Swampthing was another favorite. You know, my hubby has every issue. I get them when he dies. Thanks to some of the more graphic comics I've read, I know how to help him with that. Bwhahaahh! *coughs*
LOL I never thought of Scooby Doo. I was too young for Fantasy Island, the original Battlestar and Trek, but I lubbed Voyager (Tom Paris especially). Actually, that's how I found Supernatural *drool* I was looking up voyager actors on the Internet Movie Database to see what they'd been up to lately, saw that McNeill had directed an episode of Supernatural and thought I'd check it out.
My first paranormal media exposure was The Lost Boys. I can still quote large passages of that movie by heart! My best friend, Teresa, and I had a contest to see who could watch that movie the most. I wore out 5 VHS tapes of it. I believe the word "obsession" might apply.
Then Teresa and I started writing romances. Paranormal romances. With the characters from The Lost Boys as the heroes. We must've filled up twenty spiral notebooks with these stories. So I've been a paranormal romance author since the very start!
I've written exactly two stories that weren't paranormal--Riding Lessons, and Out For Christmas. The first is a super-short and the second is a gay romantic novella. At the end of both of them, I remember sitting back and staring at the computer and thinking, "Um... I know I've forgotten someting here... doesn't someone need fangs???"
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