I've always loved scary things and paranormal things and things that go bump in the night, but my biggest moth-to-flame item is paranormal humor. This probably started because of ghost stories around campfires and at sleepovers when we were kids. The spooky ones were fun, but the ones I really enjoyed were those with joke endings. (The Ghost with the Ten Bloody Fingers, anyone?) Silly eight-year-old humor aside, it was the moment of surprise, that unexpected lift, that happens when you're ramped up for a scare and get a laugh instead.
Paranormal humor is something of a specific niche, though. So much of it relies on viewers and readers already understanding the tropes and classic stories that the humor is subverting. If you watch Young Frankenstein without knowing Dr. Frankenstein's original story, the slapstick might be humorous, but the movie isn't nearly as funny. (So many incredible comedic performances in that movie.) If you watch What We Do in the Shadows without an understanding of vampire mythos and pop culture, again, it's not nearly as funny. (I had to explain to the hubby what vampire archetype each character represented – he got a couple of them, but not all, and wasn't "getting" the movie.) In a more general sense, though, the humor really does arise from that surprising break of tension, that moment when something that normally should be scary, or begins as scary or tense, is broken or subverted by the humor. Sometimes it's situational, such as the set up in Beetlejuice. Classic haunted house story that's subverted by the fact that we, the viewers, know the ghosts. We've met them. We like them. We can't be scared of them now. Or the arrival of the Olympians as cranky old gods in Tanya Huff's Summoner series. Or the absurd juxtaposition of Victorian manners and werewolves in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate books. Sometimes humor isn't the driver behind a piece, but happens in necessary moments that break up a piece and keep it from taking itself too seriously. A story without humor of any kind can really drag for me – and paranormal stories are no exception. The banter during Buffy episodes, or a dark, brooding vampire with moments of self-aware humor like Henry Fitzroy in the Blood series, or the completely awkward interpersonal relationship moments of Percival Whyborne in Jordan Hawk's Widdershins – all of these serve to give you that different sort of jolt, that moment of unexpected laughter in between the adrenaline rushes of scary stuff. Not all of my own paranormal writing is humorous (some is, and I love writing the theater of the absurd stories), but I'd find it dull indeed if I couldn't inject some humor into serious stories of anything past a short story length. And now, off to go watch The Nightmare Before Christmas… Don't forget to enter the Rafflecopter below and be sure to visit all of the wonderful authors on the Halloween Scare Trail! (A different prize at every stop :D ) RJ Scott - $20 Amazon Gift Card www.rjscott.co.uk V.L. Locey - $10 Redbubble Gift Card http://thoughtsfromayodelinggoatherder.blogspot.com/ Jordan Castillo Price - Ebook or Audio of Reader's choice plus JCP Swag Pack www.jordancastilloprice.com/blog J.L. Merrow - Ebook of both newly re-released werewolf novels Camwolf & Midnight In Berlin. https://jlmerrow.com/ Rick R. Reed - Ebook of A Demon Inside from DSP Publications http://rickrreedreality.blogspot.com/ K.A. Merikan - Paperback https://www.facebook.com/KAMerikan/ Charlie Richards - $20 Amazon Gift Card http://www.charlie-richards.com/ Amber Kell - $20 Amazon Gift Card www.amberkell.com Eli Easton - $20 Amazon Gift Card and second prize of ebook copies of Gothika #1-4 www.elieaston.com Charlie Cochet - 3 x $10 Amazon Gift Cards charliecochet.com/blog Meredith Russell - $10 Amazon Gift Card http://meredithrussell.co.uk/ Alex Jane - $10 Amazon Gift Card and Ebook from back catalogue. www.alexjane.info Stormy Glenn - $20 Amazon Gift Card and backlist ebook. http://stormyglenn.blogspot.com Annabelle Jacobs - $10 Amazon Gift Card and backlist ebook annabellejacobs.com
My own latest paranormal releases can be found at Pride Publishing - Semper Fae: Endangered Fae 3 and Trysts and Burning Embers: Lijun 2 (Up for pre-order.)
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Yep. I'm reading from one of my own today. Sometimes I get to do that. ;) Semper Fae is book 3 in the Endangered Fae series and while I suppose you could read it first... No. Don't do that. This series really needs to be read in order. A scene for you from the beginning of Chapter Two - you may yell at me afterwards.  Looking for the rest of the series? Book 1, Finn and Book 2, Diego, are available at Pride Publishing and all the usual retailers. :)
Hello, hello! I'm back home and still a little disoriented from GRL, but I'm getting there :D It was a lovely one, by the way. Bellora and I had so much fun and we're so grateful to all of the lovely readers who stopped to chat at any point and who came to play Urban Fantasy Bingo with us :D But I digress... Two announcements this week: Semper Fae: Endangered Fae 3 is back out in the book wilds! With a lovely new cover and a very thorough edit, Zack's story is once again available. (There are no major changes if you bought a previous edition.) Tomorrow's reading will be from Semper Fae, too - so look for that!  Semper Fae Endangered Fae 3 Pride Publishing Amazon Barnes and Noble Kobo Zack thought he had a strange job before. Working as a Marine medic in a secret government installation was odd, but working as a human liaison to the fae and as the personal assistant to a sidhe prince is downright bizarre. Throw in the fact that he's pretty damn sure he's fallen in love with his boss, and things are close to unmanageable. Of course, around the fae, one never says 'things can't possibly get any worse'. Unexplained events plague the human world. Strange sightings, spontaneous magical explosions, and odd bends in reality crop up. When Finn falls ill and a monstrous creature attacks Zack, things quickly slide into disaster. Lycanthropy, loose-cannon mages, and Lugh conspire to make a hellish mess of things—but the real peril begins when Diego loses an important piece of his mind. And Announcement Two! Pride Publishing has put the AURA books into a boxed set - how fun is that! Soon you'll be able to get all of your AURA officers in a single convenient package :D Coming November 13!  Happy Friday, everyone! Today I have an exciting excerpt from the third book in Lou Hoffman's series The Sun Child Chronicles. Ciarrah's Light follows on directly from the events at the end of The Wraith Queen's Veil. Have a listen!  Ciarrah's Light The Sun Child Chronicles 3 by Lou Hoffman Released October 16, 2018 Harmony Ink Dreamspinner Press Universal Link Luccan, future Suth Chiell of the Ethran Sunlands, also known as Lucky, has just completed a harrowing quest, but his adventures and hardships are only beginning. There’s little time to rest before his ghostly mother’s specter attacks, drowning Lucky in horrible nightmares that drain his life and nearly kill him. Only through the power of his enchanted obsidian blade, Ciarrah, can Lucky claw his way out of the shadowy visions and back to daylight. But further horrors await him when he wakes up, and his country needs him—their Sun Child—more than ever. Unstoppable wraiths—products of an advanced but dying alien world called Terrathia—are attacking, and swords and arrows cannot stop them. Fortunately Ciarrah’s magical light can, and with his dragon-kin uncle Han, his winged horse, a horde of shifters from Earth, and the wizard Thurlock at his back, Lucky faces the enemy, determined to put an end to his mother’s destructive evil once and for all. But will stopping her end the horrors facing his world?  About Lou Hoffman
Lou Hoffmann, a mother and grandmother now, has carried on her love affair with books for more than half a century, and she hasn’t even made a dent in the list of books she’d love to read—partly because the list keeps growing. She reads factual things—books about physics and history and fractal chaos, but when she wants truth, she looks for it in quality fiction. She loves all sorts of wonderful things: music and silence, laughter and tears, youth and age, sunshine and storms, forests and fields, flora and fauna, rivers and seas. Even good movies and popcorn! Those things help her breathe, and everyone she knows helps her write. (Special mention goes to (1) George the Lady Cat and (2) readers.) Proud to be a bisexual, biracial woman (of European and Native American descent), Lou considers every person a treasure not to be taken for granted. In her life, she’s seen the world’s willingness to embrace differences change, change back, and change again in dozens of ways, but she has great hope for the world the youth of today will create. She writes for readers who find themselves anywhere on the spectrums of age, sexuality, and gender, aiming to create characters that live not only in their stories, but always in your imagination and your heart. Author Links: Visit her on her blog: http://www.queerlyya.rainbow-gate.com Like her page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouHoffmannBooks/ Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lou_Hoffmann Thank goodness for scheduled posts since I'm at GRL when this goes live :D Semper Fae: Endangered Fae 3 goes LIVE this Tuesday, October 23! (As one reader said, "Finally!" LOL) In Semper Fae, we follow Zack Morrison in his adventures as the new assistant/bodyguard to a prince of the fae. Magical diseases, meddling kids, and hints of a menacing and powerful mage bent on destruction. If you haven't started at the beginning, I can only urge you to do so. Reading Endangered Fae out of order is terribly confusing.  Semper Fae Endangered Fae 3 Pride Publishing Kobo Barnes and Noble Amazon Zack thought he had a strange job before. Working as a Marine medic in a secret government installation was odd, but working as a human liaison to the fae and as the personal assistant to a sidhe prince is downright bizarre. Throw in the fact that he's pretty damn sure he's fallen in love with his boss, and things are close to unmanageable. Of course, around the fae, one never says 'things can't possibly get any worse'. Unexplained events plague the human world. Strange sightings, spontaneous magical explosions, and odd bends in reality crop up. When Finn falls ill and a monstrous creature attacks Zack, things quickly slide into disaster. Lycanthropy, loose-cannon mages, and Lugh conspire to make a hellish mess of things—but the real peril begins when Diego loses an important piece of his mind.
Endangered Fae 1 & 2 in case you need those first! :D
Happy Friday Everyone! This week's reading is a spec fic story from A.T. Weaver - Touching Yesterday. Is it time travel? Isn't it? Ah, there's the rub...  Touching Yesterday
by A.T. Weaver Amazon: Kindle Unlimited Jeff Wilde is waking up from the best and worst five weeks of his life. He remembers his boyfriend breaking up with him. He remembers going camping. He even recalls hitting his head and waking up in 1927, decades before he was born, but now he’s woken up in the 21st century again. His boyfriend claims they never broke up and that Jeff has been in a coma for five weeks. As Jeff eases back into the 21st century life he thought he’d lost, he needs answers. Did he really travel to 1927 or was it all a dream? Did he really save a little girl’s life in 1927? Could that little girl have been his grandmother? Did he change history, and, if he did, was it for the better? GRL is upon us. I'll be making the drive down to Portsmouth this coming Wednesday. If you're looking for me, here are the places I will absolutely, definitely be:  If you'll be there, remember that I have Pride Bunnies and Pride Narwhals to give away. While supplies last. :)
Also, if you come to the Storyteller Panel on Thursday, we'll be playing Urban Fantasy BINGO! Are there prizes? Of course there are prizes. Hello everyone - you've made it to Friday! For today's reading excerpt, we have an action-packed scene from Quarry, book 2 in Elizabeth Noble's Vampire Guard series. :)  Quarry
The Vampire Guard 2 by Elizabeth Noble DSP Publications Paperback Barnes & Noble Kobo Amazon Google Play Blurb: The members of the Vampire Guard—Jonas Forge, spy and soldier turned cop; computer hacker extraordinaire Blair Turner; Declan, thief, con man, and ex-pirate; and medical examiner and werewolf Dr. Lucas Coate—face a dangerous and elusive enemy. And this time, it’s personal. Over the course of three hundred years, a man has touched each of their lives in ways they are only just realizing. When a hunt for a psychotic killer in the present resurrects memories and clues from the past, they discover how they have been affected and are bound by the existence of a ruthless vampire criminal. Now, while preventing a heist at a high-tech art show and thwarting several large-scale explosions, the team must employ their unique blend of science and supernatural abilities to put an end to the machinations of the man toying with their lives. This time, he won’t slip through their fingers. This time, it’s more than a case. It’s a hunt, and Forge, Blair, Declan, and Lucas won’t stop until they’ve captured their quarry. Dreamspinner has contracted The Mage On The Hill! **wild happy dance of author joy!** This may, possibly, end up being a series, depending on how things go. Some initial details:
The working blurb - and keep in mind this is neither edited nor approved yet - just to give you an idea: Toby Jones is dying. The channeling of his hereditary magic into Arcana should have happened in adolescence, but here he is, twenty years old and stuck with unplaceable wild magic that's going to kill him in a spectacular, catastrophic bang. The mage guilds have given up on him and his last chance is an exiled mage who lives as a hermit. This man had success teaching unplaceable mages, but after a catastrophic failure is reportedly crazy. The years alone on his hilltop estate have not been good for Darius Valstad. Sunk into severe depression after the magical accident that disfigured him and nearly drowned Pittsburgh, he drifts through his days, a wraith trapped in his memories. Until the day a stricken young man collapses on his driveway, one who claims Darius is his last hope. For the first time in fifteen years, Darius must make a choice—give this wild mage back to the guilds where he will die or take him in and try to teach him, which may kill them both. The old Darius, brash and commanding, wouldn't have hesitated. Darius the exile isn't sure he can find the energy to try. A young man who wants desperately to live and his reluctant teacher who has forgotten how must struggle toward a solution that will save them both.  |
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About Angel
Angel writes (mostly) Science Fiction and Fantasy centered around queer heroes. Currently living part time in the hectic sprawl of northern Delaware and full time inside her head, she has one husband, one son, two cats, a love of all things beautiful and a terrible addiction to the consumption of both knowledge and chocolate. |
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