Reluctant Heroes

Romance is well populated by lords responsible for the welfare of their family members and tenants, by firemen, SEALs, doctors and highland warriors. And, sure, all of those character types are wonderful and brave and nobly heroic, but I very much prefer the reluctant hero.

Reluctant heroes are the Han Solos of the romantic world. They’re the devilish rogues who are happily pursuing their own, possibly shady, agendas when they’re confronted by a choice about whether to do the right thing for someone else, or to continue to do the right thing for them.

It’s usually not a linear path, which makes it more fun to see where they wobble along the road. Their pasts generally don’t let them go easy. They often have debts to pay for things that they’ve done. But all of that just makes their redemptive arc that much sweeter.

The hero in my newest book, By Hook or By Crook, starts out the Reapers series as a smuggler. Over the course of the series, he decides to turn over a new leaf. He sets himself up as a respectable businessman. He tries to make an honest woman out of his partner in crime. And he begins to fight against the greed and corruption in the Scraper cities.

He’s still something of a rogue who plays by his own rules and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, but he also has a good heart. He fights for what he believes in…even if he sometimes does it in an underhanded way.

Flynn is my tribute to all of the reluctant heroes from my youth—Han, Starbuck, pretty much everyone on the A-Team…

Who’s your favorite reluctant hero?

***

Flynn was born in the lap of luxury—a Founder’s son and heir to the Stark fortune. Of course, Molly hadn’t known that when she fell in love with the devilishly charming smuggler. If she’d known that Flynn was a Scraper back when she first met him, she probably would have hated him just on principle.

Molly was born in an outlaw camp, the daughter of a whore and a gambler. She was a street rat who didn’t belong in the glittering sky city where Flynn wanted to take her as a spy for the forts. She wasn’t ever going to turn into a lady, no matter how many fancy gowns Flynn dressed her in.

But maybe while they were there, she’d be able to talk Flynn into giving up on his plan of becoming a respectable businessman, and things could go back to the way they should be—her and Flynn raising hell, the scourge of the western skies. Blood didn’t have to be destiny, did it? And if Flynn could choose the future he wanted, then what was to stop her from doing the same?

Amazon Barnes & Noble Kobo iBooks

Holiday Stories

I love reading holiday stories so much that this year I wrote two of them, both free short reads. The first is called Homecoming and is set in the world of my Reaper series. If you're not familiar with the series, Reapers are men infected with a parasite that turns them into cannibalistic zombie-like creatures. That has Christmas written all over it, doesn't it? It's set in an alternate version of the wild west just after a cure has been discovered for the infection. Homecoming is about the trouble John, a newly cured Reaper, has going back to his old life. I thought I'd share an excerpt....

A sliver of wood as thin as a snowflake peeled away beneath the sharp blade and drifted down to lay atop his bare foot. The scent teased his nostrils, but he held back a sneeze as he followed the stroke around the curve of the eagle’s uplifted wing. He didn’t want to screw up this delicate part and, besides, if he let loose with a sneeze now, someone from the house might hear him and that would be no good. No good at all.

Head bowed, John tickled the roof of his mouth with the tip of his tongue. His sister Alice had always sworn by that method of fighting off sneezes and she would have known. With hay fever and a preacher father who insisted they sit in the front pew every Sunday no matter what, Alice had had a lot of practice at smothering sneezes. She was gone now with the rest of his siblings. Eight of them and he was the only survivor.

Setting the knife aside, he picked up the small chisel. Really it was only a large square-headed nail he’d found sticking up from the soil a few weeks past. He’d scrubbed the rust from it and sharpened the end and it worked remarkably well for his purposes. The feathers…well now, that was the challenge here. He cupped the eagle in one hand, thumb anchoring the neck and his pinky finger curled around a leg. Catching his tongue between his teeth, he began the fine work.

The feathers had to be etched individually to make it look real. He could appreciate symbolic art, but he had his preferences. His grandfather, who’d taught him to carve, had made creatures so real looking that as a child he’d been convinced the hand sized wolves and bears prowled about his room as soon as he drifted off to sleep.

He blinked the sweat from his eyes and swiped his sleeve across his face. He’d nearly forgotten that. He had forgotten it. It was another memory come back to him, and a precious one. He wished he could remember them all…the good ones and forget about the bad. Wheat and chaff. Gather up the wheat, throw the chaff into the fire. Some days, it seemed to work the other way around. Some days it seemed there was nothing left but chaff.

If you'd like to read the rest, you can find it here.

The other (super short!) story I wrote is from my Twilight of the Gods series. If you're not familiar with that one, it's about a clan of Norse demigods who've taken refuge in a little town in Iowa after the destruction of Asgard during Ragnarok. This scene takes place after Dragonslayer and has Christian and Fen talking about Yule and what gifts they're getting for their significant others. I wrote it for Mistletoe Madness. You can read it here and also enter the giveaway for a signed copy of Witch Bound and an Yggdrasil necklace.

Happy Holidays everyone, however you choose to celebrate. Do you have a favorite holiday story?

It's Win-a-Book Wednesday with...Eleri Stone!

Eleri Stone

Eleri Stone is a RITA-nominated author of paranormal and fantasy romance. Born and raised in New Jersey, she now lives in Iowa with her husband and their three children. All of her stories have some element of speculative fiction and they all end with a happily-ever-after.

Website • Blog • Facebook • Twitter 

Before the cure, Lieutenant Lyle Dalton’s job was simple: kill the Reapers. Now, under orders to inject all captured flesh eaters with the serum that restores their humanity, his Rangers at Fort Dougan face entirely new dangers. Someone wanted the Reaper cure badly enough to spill blood for it, and Lyle needs to steal it back if he hopes to hold the border.

Jane Fisher escaped Scraper crime boss Gideon Moore with only the clothes on her back. What he took from her can never be replaced, but her new home at Fort Dougan is the first safe one she’s known. Or was, until the remaining supply of serum was stolen, flown high into the mountains on Gideon’s command. Serving as Lyle’s guide through Scraper territory means revisiting her own personal hell, but it’s also an opportunity—for closure or revenge, Jane isn’t quite sure.

Beautiful, proud and haunted, Jane is a temptation Lyle’s worked hard to avoid. The mountains are the last place she needs to be. But if Jane can find the courage to face down a man like Gideon for the sake of the fort, no force on earth will keep Lyle from her side.


GUN SHY has lots of adventure with gunslingers, robber barons, and daring airship rescues, but at heart, it's a sweet and sexy friends to lovers story. It's Book Two in the Reaper series, but if the winner would rather have Book One, REAPER'S TOUCH, or any of my other books, that's completely fine with me. THE ADVENTURES OF CASSIUS FLYNN AND MOLLY MCGUIRE (Reaper 1.5) can be read for free here. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Appeal of the Alpha Hero

There’ve been a few posts lately trying to unpack the appeal of the alpha hero, like this one here and this one here. The underlying assumption seems to be that the reason alpha heroes are so popular is because they fulfill some kind of deeply imbedded female fantasy.

As a fan of the alpha male character type, I think they’re coming at it from the wrong angle. There is an element of fantasy in all romance, but I disagree that fantasy is the foundation for the appeal of the alpha male. I think the pairing of a powerful man with a less powerful woman works for the same reason all tropes work—inherent conflict + emotional resonance.

The conflict comes from the power imbalance between the two main characters. He’s rich/strong/powerful. She’s poor/weak/vulnerable. Drop that combination into any situation or setting from boardroom to werewolf pack and you’re going to have conflict.

The emotional resonance part is a little bit trickier. A lot of people say that the reason these stories resonate with so many women is because all women want a powerful man—(because brainwashing or fantasy or whatever). But I say the emotional resonance comes more from the familiarity of the setup rather than the fantasy of it. After all, women have a lot of experience with power imbalances between the sexes. We live in a world where the cards are often stacked against us. We’ve seen this game before and have strong and sometimes complicated feelings about it. The powerful man-less powerful woman setup echoes that experience and it strikes a powerful chord. Kind of like the instant emotional response you get from a child in jeopardy story. It’s not that you like seeing children in jeopardy; it’s that it’s going to get a reaction out of you. You’re going to be invested in seeing how it plays out.

With the alpha male, you have all that built in, instantly relatable drama. And washboard abs.

The fantasy part of the romance comes later as the leads negotiate the power imbalance. Does the hero become aware of his advantage and adjust his behavior? Does he cede some of his power to the heroine or does he find a way to continue to exercise his power in a way that preserves her dignity and agency? Does the heroine discover she has more leverage than she originally believed? Does she demand equal footing or does she find a safe harbor from the world in the hero’s strength? They’re all great fantasies. Just pick your flavor. By the end of the story, the hero and heroine should be equal partners in the relationship…in whatever way they agree works for them. If you walk away at the end still thinking that the hero is an asshole, that’s a failure of storytelling. Or at least a failure of the romance part of it.

**

Eleri Stone is a RITA-nominated author of paranormal and fantasy romance. Born in New Jersey, she now lives in Iowa with her husband and their three children. All of her stories have some element of speculative fiction in them and they all end with a happily-ever-after. www.eleristone.com

Amazon Barnes & Noble Kobo iBooks

Here Be News

New Releases

Before the cure, Lieutenant Lyle Dalton's job was simple: kill the Reapers. Now, under orders to inject all captured flesh eaters with the serum that restores their humanity, his Rangers at Fort Dougan face entirely new dangers. Someone wanted the Reaper cure badly enough to spill blood for it, and Lyle needs to steal it back if he hopes to hold the border.

Jane Fisher escaped Scraper crime boss Gideon Moore with only the clothes on her back. What he took from her can never be replaced, but her new home at Fort Dougan is the first safe one she's known. Or was, until the remaining supply of serum was stolen, flown high into the mountains on Gideon's command. Serving as Lyle's guide through Scraper territory means revisiting her own personal hell, but it's also an opportunity—for closure or revenge, Jane isn't quite sure.

Beautiful, proud and haunted, Jane is a temptation Lyle's worked hard to avoid. The mountains are the last place she needs to be. But if Jane can find the courage to face down a man like Gideon for the sake of the fort, no force on earth will keep Lyle from her side.

Get it today!

Other News

Veronica Scott's new book trailer for her paranormal novel Magic of the Nile set in ancient Egypt, was released and received a recommendation from the USA Today Happily Ever After blog.