Showing posts with label Lynn Flewelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lynn Flewelling. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Epic Fantasy: Where’s the Love?
Posted by: Jane Kindred
Welcome to the second installment of Fantasy Week, the first in a series spotlighting the different speculative fiction subgenres we write in here at Here Be Magic.
I’m a fantasy writer, not a romance writer. I say this repeatedly to anyone who will listen—not because I think there’s anything wrong with romance; au contraire! I think romance belongs in everything. But I want to make sure no one is disappointed when they read my books expecting a traditional romantic plot with the push-pull of a hero and heroine trying to resist one another and failing, full of erotic tension and the eventual surrender of both in the unequivocal HEA. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got that, too, but it’s only a part of the story.
My agent recently confirmed as much when I tried to write a traditional romantic suspense to sell to an established line. “I love your writing, as always,” she said. “But this isn’t really feeling like a romance to me.” Try as I might, I just can’t resist the allure of building my own world, creating my own mythology, and dragging my characters on an epic journey fraught with peril and rife with high stakes that can bring down entire kingdoms—or entire worlds.
Nevertheless, I spent the past week enmeshed in a different kind of alternate world: the world of the romance writer, at the RT Booklovers Convention. Because despite the fact that I don’t write romance, I can’t write fantasy without it. Fantasy without romance feels like it’s missing one of the most epic of adventures—the adventure of the human heart.
And that puts me smack-dab in the middle of a publishing conundrum. Romance readers are often a bit intimidated by the epic-ness of the epic fantasy. And fantasy readers have a tendency to be a tad suspicious when something looks like romance—despite the fact that at their core, many fantasies have a love story, though often underdeveloped. As a kid devouring both romance and fantasy, I always wished the fantasies had more of the former, and the romances more of the fantastical.
So there I sat at RT, surrounded by romance writers and readers, and feeling just as much a fish out of water as I did last November at the World Fantasy Convention. I’m some kind of chimera that can’t be classified. I have chocolate in my peanut butter. I may even be Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together with parts that work well together though they’ve come from different origins, but seeming a little scary and misshapen to those who’ve never seen one of me before. “What do you write?” people would ask. “Epic fantasy,” I’d reply, and then quickly add “with romantic elements” before they came at me with torches and pitchforks.
To most people who haven’t read the genre, when they hear “epic fantasy,” they think of 1,000-page paperweights full of elves and orcs and dragons, page after page of painstaking descriptions of drab medieval customs and complicated court intrigue with names no one can pronounce, and lots and lots of swords and sorcerers. And to be sure, books with those elements are epic fantasy, but none of those things are required to make a book an epic fantasy. What it requires, generally, is a uniquely invented world that is not our own, a protagonist whose problem is much larger than herself (her people and her world are depending on her and she usually has to fight someone powerful to save them), and magic. And what’s more magical than love? I say it fits right in with the epic.
Some of my favorite epic and romantic fantasies are Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series—its court intrigue woven together through highly charged erotic scenes, sacred prostitutes, and a healthy dose of BDSM; Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series, with its sexy, fae-like m/m lovers as medieval Sherlock Holmesian detectives who are also scoundrels and thieves; and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Yes, Harry Potter is as epic and romantic as they come.
So, really…what’s not to love about epic fantasy?
Don't forget to check out Sunday's kick-off post for Fantasy Week from Angela Highland on why she reads fantasy, and be sure to stop by every day this week for a new post from one of our fantasy writers.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Here Be Romance?
Posted by: Jane Kindred
I've never thought of myself as a romance writer (well, not since high school, when my dream was to become the next Victoria Holt...look her up, ya little whippersnappers); I consider myself a fantasy writer. But somehow my books have landed with publishers who specialize in romance. I worry I'm somehow misrepresenting myself.
It's not that there isn't any romance in my books, it's just that the romance doesn't drive the plot of the story. As for an HEA ("happily ever after," a requirement in most romance), well, it depends on your definition of "happily." My characters are generally happy with their choices, and they don't usually end up alone, but the relationships certainly wouldn't be covered by the Defense of Marriage Act. (Side note: I always hear that in my head as "Defensive Marriage Act." Makes a lot more sense that way, if you ask me.)
The funny thing is, I spent many years agonizing over the fact that there was too much romance in my fantasy. Back when I started writing fantasy (yes, it was the Stone Age; thanks for noticing), the bastard child of speculative fiction—itself the bastard child of genre fiction—looked down upon the redheaded stepchild of romance, and frequently beat it up for the heck of it and stole its lunch money. Paranormal romance and urban fantasy didn't even exist then. (I said it was the Stone Age, whippersnappers. Stop rubbing it in.)
But while I was busy trying to make my epic fantasy acceptable to the keepers of the status quo, writers like Lynn Flewelling and Jacqueline Carey came along and told the establishment to suck rocks. (I'm sure there are other, earlier examples, but these are the ones I noticed and fell head over heels for.) They wrote the stories they wanted to tell, and romance happened to be a part of it.
So now I'm working on revisions to the final installment of the first trilogy in my House of Arkhangel'sk series, and I'm having a fight with the heroine. Seems I was so successful at suppressing her romantic leanings to fit the traditional mold that a scene that should have been the romantic climax is utterly devoid of passion. I think I've stumbled upon the solution, though. I had the love interest slap her when she finally confessed her feelings. That woke her up. ;)
I know I'm pretty much asking for an "amen" from the choir here, but how do you feel about romance in your fantasy? Is it "You got your romance in my fantasy!", "You got your fantasy in my romance!", or is it an awesome tasty flavor combination you can't believe somebody didn't think of before?
Jane
www.janekindred.com
It's not that there isn't any romance in my books, it's just that the romance doesn't drive the plot of the story. As for an HEA ("happily ever after," a requirement in most romance), well, it depends on your definition of "happily." My characters are generally happy with their choices, and they don't usually end up alone, but the relationships certainly wouldn't be covered by the Defense of Marriage Act. (Side note: I always hear that in my head as "Defensive Marriage Act." Makes a lot more sense that way, if you ask me.)
The funny thing is, I spent many years agonizing over the fact that there was too much romance in my fantasy. Back when I started writing fantasy (yes, it was the Stone Age; thanks for noticing), the bastard child of speculative fiction—itself the bastard child of genre fiction—looked down upon the redheaded stepchild of romance, and frequently beat it up for the heck of it and stole its lunch money. Paranormal romance and urban fantasy didn't even exist then. (I said it was the Stone Age, whippersnappers. Stop rubbing it in.)
But while I was busy trying to make my epic fantasy acceptable to the keepers of the status quo, writers like Lynn Flewelling and Jacqueline Carey came along and told the establishment to suck rocks. (I'm sure there are other, earlier examples, but these are the ones I noticed and fell head over heels for.) They wrote the stories they wanted to tell, and romance happened to be a part of it.
So now I'm working on revisions to the final installment of the first trilogy in my House of Arkhangel'sk series, and I'm having a fight with the heroine. Seems I was so successful at suppressing her romantic leanings to fit the traditional mold that a scene that should have been the romantic climax is utterly devoid of passion. I think I've stumbled upon the solution, though. I had the love interest slap her when she finally confessed her feelings. That woke her up. ;)
I know I'm pretty much asking for an "amen" from the choir here, but how do you feel about romance in your fantasy? Is it "You got your romance in my fantasy!", "You got your fantasy in my romance!", or is it an awesome tasty flavor combination you can't believe somebody didn't think of before?
Jane
www.janekindred.com
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