The AP reports the successful test of a robotic hand controlled by the brain. The stuff of science fiction. Fascinating! Check it out.

In other news, Chloe Neill is running a contest in celebration of her January release of FIRESPELL, first novel in her Dark Elite YA urban fantasy series. Click here to see what you can do to win your own Tiffany & Co. key.

LEGACY OF STONE, the long-awaited third novel in Vickie Taylor's fabulous gargoyle paranormal romance series released yesterday!

And finally, because I am evil (comes with being an agent), I'm prepared to kill you with cuteness. Don't say I didn't warn you.

We've been talking a lot about shifters and demons.  So, where the heck are those gargoyles I promised?  Well, here they are.  The wonderful Vickie Taylor is my guest today with a post about gargoyle romance and a giveaway.  Anyone who comments below will be entered to win a signed copy of one of her books.

Anonymous won the signed Karen Whiddon book from yesterday's giveaway!  Please e-mail me at Lucienne(dot)Diver@knightagency.net so we know where to send it.

Gargoyles and Shifters and Demons, Oh My! week is still going strong.  I'm going to continue it through the weekend and into next week.  Vampires will have a week all their own beginning April 6th!

GARGOYLE ROMANCE by Vickie Taylor

“Gargoyles?  Seriously?”

Those weren’t my friend and critique partner’s actual words when I first pitched her the  idea of a gargoyle as a romantic hero, but they certainly sum up the expression on her face. We were on our way home to Dallas from a writer’s conference in Shreveport. She nearly drove us into a ditch. Still, she was a good friend and a terrific writer herself, so she was sympathetic to the nature of weird ideas. They’re like an itch that just has to be scratched.  So she nurtured the dream instead of killing it with a single swipe of reality like, “That’s insane.”

Rewind a couple of years. I’d been in a Barnes and Noble browsing the discount table. Some women like sales on fancy dresses, bags or shoes. I like books. I flipped through a coffee table book full of amazing photos of gargoyles. I read the legend that explained why a church so opposed to demonic belief and satanism would grace the edifices of their holiest cathedrals, such as Notre Dame, with such horrific carvings. The legend was fascinating (I’ll be adding it to my website soon if you’re curious), but I had no idea what to do with it. I was writing romantic suspense at the time, and paranormal romance wasn’t popular. So I tucked the information away.

Fast forward to that Shreveport conference a few years later. I’m itching to try something different. What the hell? In the middle of a lecture on nothing remotely to do with paranormal, I realized how I could use the gargoyles in a romance. I started furiously scribbling notes and pitched the idea to my friend on the way home. Just a few short months later, with the help of a terrific bookseller friend named Kathy Baker and a wonderful new (for me) agent named Lucienne Diver, Les Gargouillen were on the road to print.

Seriously? Gargoyles?

 The subgenre of paranormal romance has never been more open to innovation and creativity than it is right now. Sure, there are still plenty of psychic, vampire and werewolf stories out there and they’re as endearing as ever. But now the door is open for shape-shifters, aliens, genetic mutants, gods and goddesses, wizards and witches, demons and angels, ghosts and ghost hunters (and huntresses). It’s as if someone flipped on the “open-minded” switch in the reading public. Whatever a writer can imagine, if he or she can tell the story in a compelling way, the market will devour.

I’m not saying I have “the formula” for success. I don’t think there is a formula – the more you can break the rules the better. But here are a few things I’ve kept in mind as I’ve created a new race of beings for romance readers.

1)      Create a mythology. It’s not enough anymore to explain the rules of your universe. You’ve got to explain why your altered world is the way it is. Explaining why it is the way it is helps the reader suspend disbelief. In the gargoyle world, the mythology behind their creation is critical. Their morals are based on it. Gena Showalter also did a fine job of this in HEART OF THE DRAGON which I read recently. She doesn’t just place her dragons in the lost city of Atlantis, she explains why, and in a very concise, believable (for a paranormal reader) manner they are there.

2)      Make the heroes very handsome and very virile. Let’s face it. Us women will forgive a lot for those two qualities.

3)      BUT, the more inhuman their physiology is, the more human their nature needs to be. Give them flaws and vulnerabilities. Avoid the superhero complex. Let them doubt themselves occasionally and others frequently.

4)      Don’t hide the fact they are “fish out of water” in the modern world – use it. Have the inhuman characters ponder their place in the modern world. It’s only natural.

Most of all, open your mind as a writer and a reader.  Whatever you can conceive these days, you can write. As long as you tell a compelling story.

Gargoyle Romances
CARVED IN STONE, Berkley
FLESH AND STONE, Berkley
LEGACY OF STONE, Berkley (forthcoming)


Anthologies
BITE, Berkley (with stories by Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight and Vickie Taylor)
DEMON'S DELIGHT, Berkley (with stories by MaryJanice Davidson, Emma Holly, Vickie Taylor and Catherine Spangler)

Since two of the authors from today's good news are in this pic, I thought I'd use this in my newest post announcing that Vickie Taylor (bottom right) is a RITA finalist in the novella category for "Angel and the Hellraiser" in the DEMON'S DELIGHT anthology.  Go, Vickie!

Also in the pic are: Rachel Caine, Beth Cornelison and me; (bottom) Rosemary Clement-Moore, P.N. Elrod, Vickie Taylor.  It's from a party a couple of years ago in the Dallas are at Rachel's wonderful home, where we entertained ourselves with crazy stories and her oversized iguanas!