From Fantasy to Paranormal Romance

by Isobo Kelly

I came to paranormal romance from the horror and fantasy genres. Back in the day before there was paranormal romance, the only place to find creatures like vampires and ghosts was the horror genre, and the only place to find magic, dragons and faeries was fantasy.

I found romance novels satisfied my craving for more love story, but then I missed the fantasy. So when I started writing romances, I wrote what I wanted to read—fantasy romance. I was avoiding horror because I scared myself too much. But in the background, I still loved stories of vampires and werewolves and witches (oh my!).

Then early paranormal stories started to appear, many published by fantasy publishers as urban fantasy or horror. They combined world-building fantasy, horror and had good dollops of romance. More romance centered paranormals also started to appear. The move from reading fantasy to reading paranormals seemed quite natural. And I started to realize there was little difference between what I was already doing—world-building fantasy romance—and paranormal romance.

It still surprised me, though, how easy the transition was from fantasy to paranormal. The transition from horror is even easier as many paranormal worlds rise from the spooky realms of the horror novel—vampires, werewolves, demons—but as I mentioned, I don’t do serious horror (I like to sleep at night!). Between the two genres, there’s also a lot of overlap, and combining elements of each makes for some exciting paranormal stories.

By taking my fantasy worlds, throwing in just a touch of horror (in my case horror light) and setting the stories in a contemporary time period, I started writing my first paranormal romances.

So how did you come to paranormal romances? From the romance genre? Or like me, from the fantasy and/or horror genres? Or maybe even the spooky Young Adult books? What started your craving for the paranormal?