A Few Parting Words About Keeping Your Dreams Alive!

Isn't that a cool house in the photo at left? It's my parents new farm house which should be finished by January.

My parents are 70 and 65. At their age most people retire and move to town. (At least that's how it works with the farmers around here.)

...well, my folks have other plans. My father is raising natural beef cattle on this farm place and has no plans to quit anytime soon.

...so at the age when their peers are calling it quits and settling on their duffs in town, my parents are packing it up and moving back to the country. It's "back" to the country because in 1984 my parents had to quit farming and sell their home & farm, move to town, and find jobs in our small town.

Then in 1990, after years of saving and working off-farm, they started renting and feeding cattle at my grandfather's farm (Gramps semi-retired at 80). For the past 17 years they have been driving back and forth keeping their dreams of being back on the farm alive, plus my mother worked herself up from secretary to manager at her difficult job, and they cared for their ailing parents until their deaths.

They've been working their asses off for 24 years to see their dream become reality. TWENTY-FOUR YEARS!

And my parents did it their way. Others told them to just remodel the old (firetrap) house that was on the place. Some told them they were crazy to move out on the farm to deal with hot summers and harsh winters at their age.

I'm jumping for joy. I see hope in what they're doing. I see dreams becoming reality. I'm proud to have their blood running through my veins!

Today is my last post on Beyond the Veil. I'm changing up some things in my life. I'm taking steps to make sure I'm doing what I need to make my dreams come true...dreams about my writing career, but about some personal visions as well.

I'm confident I can make them happen. I hope it doesn't take 24 years...but so be it, if it does. I'm going to follow my parents example:

• Work Hard
• Ignore the Negative Nay-sayers
• Decide Your Own Dream
• Get Back Up and Keep Going...and going....and going...and going :)

Wishing my fellow writers and our readers the strength to follow your dreams, I bid you good-bye...for awhile anyway :)

~Margo Lukas

http://www.margolukas.com/

I Want My HEA!

HALF MOON RISING, in print at Amazon now.

Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas

It's easy to assume that Halloween is the most paranormal holiday out there, but is that the truth? Let's take a turn around the Christmas Tree and perhaps we might start to feel differently...

Here's a festive ornament; Santa in his sleigh with a load of toys. A timeless figure who was been known by many names throughout history....Santa Clause, Chris Kringle, St. Nick, Father Christmas. He's been around for ages. Why? Because he's an Immortal! I wonder what he takes in return for all those presents found in our stockings?? Is he a big elf, or something else...vampire, fallen angel, a jolly Druid perhaps?

Next on the tree is a trio of his little helpers. Those industrious elves painting trains and rocking horses. Are they immortal like their boss? Or perhaps these elves are enslaved by some sinister magic?

Farther up on my tree I see a familiar fellow flashing his red nose. Good old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Yeah, a deer that can fly and has a glowing nose--that's seems perfectly natural! Makes you wonder what kind of spell these poor animals are under. Or perhaps they are spirits trapped in the bodies of reindeer until they perform enough good deeds to be freed.

And who is this brightly painted little soldier? It's the Nutcracker. Reminds me of Frankenstein! I hope the only things he cracks in that jaw is nuts.

Frosty is peeking out from the wrapping paper below. A man made of snow who uses a magic hat to come to life. An Arctic circle golem! His could be a kiss that chills you to the bone.

Over on the piano my song book is open to "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." Can you imagine how scared those poor shepards were when angels from heaven came a calling? Any holiday with angels, guiding stars, an evil king (Herod), and a baby who is the savior of mankind has the right elements for a paranormal legend.

At this time of the year who needs werewolves and vampires....we've got angels and flying reindeer!

Wishing you a joy as we start our holiday season!

~Margo

Paranormal Tunes (or Monsters that Make You Want to Shake Your Booty!)

"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. Who doesn't crank up the radio when that tune comes on? It came on this morning while I was doing the school commute and has been playing in my head all day.

So for fun today I'm going to list as many paranormal songs as my hubby and I can brainstorm. If you guys can think of more--add them in the comments.

Werewolf, Vampire, Zombie, Witch and "other" songs (in no particular order):

• "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde
• "Monster Mash" by Bobby Picket
• "Wolf Moon" by Type O Negative (I got to see these guys in concert--twice! Peter Steele=yummy)
• "Suspended in Dusk" by Type O Negative
• "Witchy Woman" by the Eagles
• "Magic Man" by Heart
• "Black Magic Woman" by Santana
• "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr.
• "J.B. Witch Dance" by Masters of Reality
• "Of Wolf and Man" by Metallica
• "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
• "Thriller" by Michael Jackson
• "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo
• "Twilight Zone" by Neil Norman
• "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniel's Band
• "Bark at the Moon" by Ozzy Osbourne

And my husband says, "Pretty much anything by Rob Zombie."

Just for an side note--I'm not listening to any paranormal themes at the moment. I've got "Fingers" by Pink playing. Hmmm...I wonder how many songs are about...?

~That's it for now :)

Margo

The Idea Machine

Yesterday over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, they were playing a game with their favorite (and not-so-favorite) romance novels. They presented a list of four word synopsis sentences and made their readers guess what novel it described. (The only one I could guess was "He was a hooker"=Robin Schone's Gabriel's Woman, but I was wrong!)

But what struck me as I read their creative list was how much the sentences resembled the "ideas" that spew out of on-line plot generators. Do a search on the terms "idea generator" and "plot generator" and you'll be amazed. There is also a low-tech idea machine which involves putting individual plot elements written on tiny scraps of paper into containers then randomly drawing a group of elements out together for a plot.

Guess what, folks? Plot "generators" are stupid. Why don't I like them? Because they are void of any connection to things that I have opinions and feelings about. These are suppose to get the creative juices flowing??? If I'm going to spend months of my life with this story, it had better damned be about something that engages and challenges me.

Take my book, Half Moon Rising, for example. The basic plot took shape based on one of my personal pet peeves: genealogy. (Why do hate such a harmless hobby shared by millions? Too many years working at a library helping people with the microfiche for one reason.) Anyhoo...

I was reading a paranormal romance (a good one, too) where the heroine was reflecting on the eternal battle fought between her people and the hero's. Images of their family trees flashed through my mind...and then it struck me how there was never any nerdy vampire doing genealogy in paranormal novels. Then the classic "what if" grabbed my mind. This led me to the idea of a werewolf pack who were as confused about their origins as the crabby lady spending hours reading ship passenger lists from 1870 was about hers.

From that first nugget of an idea came the story of a romance between a werewolf with a big secret and a kick-ass heroine that eventually became Half Moon Rising. And it was an idea I that interested me enough to keep me knocking out the manuscript day after day.

So basically it was a petty, nasty dislike of a beloved hobby that started my brain churning for that book. My current work-in-progress struck me when I saw a picture of a cute guy in a roman soldier outfit. Tomorrow give me a copy of National Geographic, the front page of a newspaper, and a place in line behind the good-looking guy with a snake tattoo up his calf buying sunglasses at Target--and believe me, I'll get a story idea.

The best Idea Machine? Life live, observe humanity, and pay attention to how it makes you feel.

Of course, this is my opinion. How about other authors out there--where do your ideas come from?

~Margo

Half Moon Rising in print October 30, 2007. Blog: I Want My HEA!

P.S. Just for fun I thought up a four word sentence for my book: Flawed werewolf seeks answers.

The Appeal of Paranormal Sex

You know, there is something about paranormal romances that doesn't get a lot of "talk time"...

Oh, we love to talk about the sexy paranormal hero and how he embodies the "dark" side of humanity. We'll talk about why we love to escape into new worlds and explore new mythologies. That's good stuff. Interesting stuff.

...but what about that other "stuff" we like in our paranormal romances?

SEX :) Sex with men who aren't human. Sex with women who are so much more than mortal. It doesn't matter if the paranormal is an erotic or a behind-closed-doors sweet story. Most sexual encounters in paranormal romances strain against society's conventions of "normal" sex.

The taboo aspect to paranormal sex sets it apart from other romances. It pushes the limits and often goes in the direction of rape and bestiality. Yes, those two words are loaded and controversial, but the truth is that those things are part of the human sexual psyche. If you disagree, I'd point you in the direction of any Nancy Friday book or ask you to peruse the laws on the books in your state.

Here is where I have to make an important point. I have NEVER read a paranormal romance where a woman or man is physically raped. NOR have I read a story where a human makes love to an animal. Obviously I haven't read every paranormal romance out there, but the big publishers and bigger e-publishers won't print those stories (and say so in their submission guidelines).

Rape and bestiality are not romantic. They are deeply embedded triggers inside the human experience.

But let's think about how many vampire lovers have visited the heroine in her dreams--not by her permission, but by overpowering her mind with their own to create a sexual encounter beyond the physical realm. Or how about when the hero makes love to the heroine and she's covered in fur and licking intimate parts with her very long tongue?

Hot stuff. Not for every romance reader, but I'm not the only one who likes edgy scenes. We are buying paranormal romances by the millions.

We walk a fine line in our stories and there are some authors who are true masters at bringing the reader tantalizingly close to those lines--without pushing them over. (If they would nudge too far, we'd squirm and put the book down. No author or publisher wants to have a reader do that!)

Okay, I touched on two reasons that I believe are involved in the appeal of paranormal sex. Why do you think paranormal romances and their love scenes are in such hot demand? Oh, come on. Spill.

--Totally off topic: I've got a free short story posted on my blog. Check it out here.--

Thanks

~Margo Lukas

What Was the 1st Paranormal Romance Published?

Okay, you know it’s bad when the title is a question. I have to say, I chose this topic thinking I’d be able to find--if not one definitive answer--at least some lively discussion on the topic.

Google, Ask.com, and RomanceWiki failed me. Romantic Times had a nice list of top picks in the genres over the years, but no dates listed. Grrrr.

So, my next step was to dig in my brain and try to remember the first paranormal romance I read. It was sometime in the mid-nineties while I was working at local college library. Then it hit me: Amanda Ashley. I checked out her website and found the cover that I’m pretty certain was the book. It was “Embrace the Night”, a vampire story, and it was published in 1995.

Amanda had a nice article on her website where she mentioned being inspired by Nancy Gideon’s Pinnacle Vampires published in 1994 and by Lori Herter who published the vampire romance, Obsession in 1991.

1991?? There weren’t any paranormal romances before this? I find that hard to believe, but maybe it’s true. To clarify--I’m defining romance as the standard girl meets boy, conflict, and then a “happy ever after.” Otherwise Anne Rice and Bram Stroker might try to take the title (not on my watch).

I wonder if there were any time-travel romances before 1991. I consider time-travel paranormal, simply because it involves ideas beyond the laws of modern science. Did any of those 80’s writers tackle that plot line? I'm pulling up a blank on that question.

Anyone else out there have a clue as to when the first paranormal romance novel hit the bookshelves? Now that I've looked and not found the answer--I'm really curious.

UPDATE! Rhonda Stapelton pointed me to her Northeast Ohio RWA chapter page and the entry on Ms. Shiplett. June Lund Shiplett published "Journey to Yesterday" in 1979! Wow, that's what I wanted to find :) She was also a charter member of RWA. Romance writers are such a creative bunch.

Paranormal Lifespan and the Romance: Immortal vs. Mortal

So who does it for you ladies? Mr. Immortal who has seen centuries of loneliness until he meets the heroine, or Mr. Mortal who is scary & monstrous, but has only one life-time for redemption and true love?

World-building in paranormal romances involves many decisions on the part of an author. One aspect of that “world” that has far-reaching consequences is deciding if the paranormal characters live for centuries or do they pass through the story, aging more or less the same as humans.

As authors we get to have lots of fun with this whole spectrum of lifespan. We play “god” and decide if silver kills the werewolf, or if Count Hotpants witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire standing in the sun. I have read (and written) variations on those two extremes. Most immortal characters have a weakness that can lead to their death. Mortal paranormal characters are not mere humans. These characters commonly have strengths that make them hard to kill and age slower.

But how does the mortality of the character affect the reader’s experience of the romance?

An immortal character can bring a darkness and depth to a romance that surpasses the human experience. This character is “larger than life” and exciting for the reader. Elements from historicals can be tied into the plot creating a bigger story. And let’s not forget the practice an immortal hero has in the bedroom department! But remember the scene in Highlander when Conner Macleod is holding his elderly love as she dies? Downer!

Can there be a true, resounding happy-ever-after with an immortal? If the author has to “match” the destinies of the two love leads, how do you like it to come out? Should they both become immortal and live outside the typical human experience, or should the immortal fall to earth and become mortal to complete the romance experience?

What about the mortal paranormal characters? Are their supernatural abilities enough to make them special and interesting? With mortality comes messy problems like family and death. Do these more “real” issues take away from the escapism of paranormal romance? Do mortal paranormal characters have what it takes to satisfy?

But with mortal pairings the flip side of death is birth. In this happy-ever-after, the implication of a secure future with a normal life span and probable babies (and supernatural babies, to boot) creates a satisfying fulfillment of the romance story arc.

Let us know what you think. How does the immortality, or lack of immortality, affect your romance reading pleasure?

Cavemen, Bulldogs, & Mini-mugs

This isn’t exactly a paranormal topic…but I read it on Yahoo and thought it was romance novel interesting: Women prefer “bull-dog” faced men.

We do?

When you say “bull-dog” I think of big slobbering jowls…sorry, not that sexy!

But then as I read the article and read short fore-head guys (i.e. Brad Pitt) are “chick-magnets”, I tended to agree with them more. They had a whole list of guys like Will Smith and Johnny Depp, too.

But they didn’t reach this conclusion by checking out People’s 100 Most Beautiful, instead they used…science!

Yep, a bunch of white lab coats measured the skulls of ancient men & our chimp like ancestors. They found that “Men with "mini mugs" might have been most attractive to the opposite sex and thus most likely to attract mates for reproduction, passing along the striking features to the next generation and so forth, said lead study author Eleanor Weston, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.”

“Mini-mugs”. That doesn’t sound sexy, either. Doubt we could throw that phrase into our hero’s descriptions and make are readers swoon with desire.

Guess its one more piece of information to add to the romance writer’s research file. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s fun to research on why men and women are attracted to each other....not only because that “attraction” make the world go ‘round…it makes for some damn fine literature, too.

Carnival Ghosts? County Fair Phantoms?

It’s race against the clock. A storm is a coming and it’s always a possibility that the electricity goes out here on the plains. Not unusual for August either.

Rain, Thunderstorms, and the County Fair. That’s what August has always been about for me.

And being the County Fair, my daughters and I had an interesting conversation on the way home…through the fog-filled eight mile drive home across muddy gravel roads. Has there ever been a story about a County Fair ghost? See, my girls love Phantom of the Opera so they began this crazy story (they are 8 & 4) about the Phantom of the Fair and then through a barrage of giggling the story quickly became “the Phantom Pig of the Fair.”

But still it made me wonder if there were any real ghost legends or fictional paranormal stories about fairs or carnivals. I could recall Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and the 1932 movie, “Freaks” (which isn’t a paranormal but is as scary as heck.) Nothing else comes to mind. Anyone out there know of a paranormal fair story?

A quick search online didn’t turn up any ghost stories related to fairs or carnivals either. I did find an Angel sighting. (I’m agreeing with the Moth camp).

Personally, I think either a fair or a carnival would be a perfect setting for a good ghost story. In one of my early drafts of Half Moon Rising I had a “hazing” scene where a teenage werewolf was dared to sneak into a cheap carnival haunted house and shift without getting caught. It didn’t make it to the final drafts, but I still think it would make a cool scene.

Well, the storm is in the next county. Time to wrap it up. Have a great weekend and see you at the fair!

~Margo

P.S. The storm came through, but only a few end rows of our crops got flattened by the winds. Thank goodness for small favors :)

Origins of the Tooth Fairy

First let me explain WHY I’m posting about the Tooth Fairy. My eldest daughter had to have five baby teeth pulled today (yes…big ouch!) and about the only thing that made her feel better was telling her that there would be a big payoff under that pillow tomorrow morning.

Of course, she thought “a million bucks” would cover it. Ha Ha. I was thinking more along of a fiver, but I guess when you’re eight it doesn’t hurt to dream big.

My girls have these adorable “piggy bank” style boxes that come with a book to record the date and a satin pillow with a little tooth pocket. There was much drama first about IF five teeth with roots would fit in the pocket (they did) and if the Tooth Fairy would find five teeth on one night a bit suspicious (we left a note to explain they were pulled). So after everyone was tucked in, I found myself wondering, “How did the Tooth Fairy come about?”

Surprisingly there isn’t much out there about this. I found two sites with helpful info: Dr. Bunn’s site (Yes, I think that’s his real name) and the good ole’ Straight Dope site.

Both agree that our modern Tooth Fairy myth is a very new story—less then a century old. In the 30’s there were two stories by different authors published about her and this is apparently where the idea of a fairy who finds teeth under pillows and gives out money for the little pearly whites really took off. Straight Dope goes on to say the toothy miss wasn’t even commercialized until the 1980’s when such things as “Tooth Fairy” boxes (see above) began appearing on store shelves.

What is interesting to me as a paranormal author is the witch connection. Yes, the witch connection! While the kind, sparkly tooth fairy is a figure that gives comfort to modern day children across the nation, those poor middle-age peasant kids had no such luck. Instead people have found traditions in England and Europe that suggest baby teeth were burned or buried to prevent the local witch from using the baby teeth to CURSE the children.

Yep. I guess teeth worked even better than hair for hexing those serfs.

Wouldn’t that make the great opening of a paranormal story?

A mother burying the first tooth of her first-born believing she’s alone in the woods…and then when she leaves the scene—a haggard old creature could appear and dig through the freshly turned soil until a small yellow nugget of tooth is held gleefully in the fading sunlight!!!

Can you picture it?

I’m going to leave you with another interesting medieval tooth tradition. Some cultures believed that if a buried tooth was eaten by a dog, the child’s adult teeth would resemble a canine. This also worked with hogs and mice.

I didn’t know a person’s teeth could resemble a hog’s. But then luckily I live in a century where we can visit the dentist and have five teeth pulled so we don’t look like we’ve got a mouth two sizes too small with teeth two sizes too big.

Have a great weekend!
~Margo

Have you done The Cube?

I adore doing personality quizzes….Meyers-Briggs, Glamour quizzes, obscure made-up web tests…I’ll take them all. I’m not sure why I take them. Probably because like most people, I think I’ll find something in my “results” that I can use to justify some not so good behavior…

But with all the quizzes I’ve ever taken, there is one that is the absolute coolest. I have so much fun with this “test”, I do it to all my friends when they come over.

One day, browsing through the bookstore, I came across a small square book. Its subtitle is what hooked me: The Ancient Visualization Game That Reveals Your True Self.

TRUE SELF? Hey, I want to know that. I had to buy it.

The book’s full title is Secrets of the Cube: The Ancient Visualizaion Game That Reveals Your True Self. It’s written by Annie Gottlieb and Slobodan D. Pesic.

And the best part? It’s scary how close to home it hits.

The authors ask you (or you ask your friends) a series of things to visualize. Then you describe in as much detail what you have visualized in your mind. Their explanations of what you saw in your vision read a bit like a dream interpretation book, but much more specific. I’m not going to tell you what they ask you to think about…it would ruin the fun when you have a chance to do this yourself

Of course it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t tell you a little bit about what my “cube” told me about myself. On the up-side, I’m a Visionary Intuitive which means I can make “leaps of association that can lead an Intuitive to a correct conclusion by a non-logical route.” I think that is a pretty useful thing for a writer!

On the down-side, I can have “a sense of too many possibilities.” That’s not so good when I’m trying to decide which way I want a scene to go!!! Or when shopping for shoes!

The Paranormal and Romance: Perfect Together

I was reading some of the older posts about ghosts the other day and a memory came back to me. A memory of my first romantic fantasy.

I had to be about ten or eleven…and I had a fantasy about a ghost boy who was a character in an ABC “After School Special” (remember those?). It was called "The Red Room Riddle". All I can recall was that the ghost boy had beautiful blond curly hair and was trapped in the red room inside of an old mansion.

Don’t remember exactly how I turned that into a romance in my little elementary brain, but do remember having them.

And that made me wonder why some of us love our paranormals and other romance readers just shake their head. Obviously even as a young reader, paranormal stories appealed to me the same as it did to the millions who read similar books. But for some reason I took it step further and wanted my stories to have not only paranormal/fantasy elements but romance, too.

Why does paranormal and romance seem like such a natural fit to some of us and not to others? Have you ever tried to explain the appeal of the paranormal to others who don’t read them? I have one relative whose voice drips with sarcasm every time she mentions “a werewolf romance”…in a way that makes it seem like the craziest thing in the world. Never mind telling her that millions of readers like to read about vampires and werewolves finding true love.

Monsters in love. Monsters redeemed and forgiven all sorts of sins. Monsters forgiven and loved by not only the heroine, but also the reader. Perhaps what truly defines our paranormal genre is not the characters (who vary from god to demon, vampire to angel) but the readers. Maybe we’re the “thing” about paranormal romances that make them work.

Could it be that the lover of paranormal romance is more accepting, more likely to forgive rather than chastise in real-life too? I think it would be interesting to see if the ability to forgive and respect the strange, monstrous hero translates into a real-world view different from non-paranormal romance readers.

Just a thought.

~Margo

The Substitute is Here

Hello All You Paranormal Lovers! (and Paranromal-Romance Readers, too…hee, hee)

I’m Margo Lukas and I’ll be filling in for S.J. who is taking some needed time off. I’d like to thank Carolan for inviting me to come over and play for awhile. This is a great blog with some very interesting posts. I promised myself I’d take some time off from the online world to write and do family things this summer…but I couldn’t pass up the chance to be in such good company.

Since this is my first post on Beyond the Veil, I guess I should do a short introduction. My debut book Half Moon Rising was released in eBook this past March from Samhain and will be hitting the book shelves in print this October. I’m threatening my hubby that I’m going to give the UPS guy a big kiss when my author copies arrive. That’s not a lie because my UPS guy is a total hottie. If they come via US mail…well, my mailman is a sweetie but he’s in his 70’s!

I’m here on the paranormal blog because my hero is a werewolf. Half Moon Rising started as a project for a writing class I was taking and grew from there. I had written three contemporary romances (safely tucked under my bed) and wanted to challenge myself. (More on why I thought a paranormal would be a challenge in some other post.)

I have loved the romance genre since before I even understood what was happening behind that bedroom door. Then, as now, it was the "Happy Ever After" that made this genre my favorite. My maternal grandmother was the town librarian and I enjoyed many hours working in her library. I often wonder if she knew about the big juicy 1970’s & 1980’s romances I was sneaking home. I know she liked to read them. When she passed away she left each of her grandchildren $1000. Though I could have used it in a more “practical” way (i.e. paying bills) I bought a laptop computer that has increased my productivity ten-fold. I pray she’s looking down and smiling.

Over the next few weeks I hope to get know you and my fellow paranormal Samhain authors better (and vice versa). Thanks again to Carolan for the invite and have a warm, sunny weekend.

~Margo