Sampler of Short Stories in Several Sub-genres

Laura Vivanco

Over at the Smart Bitches, someone's got an unusual request:

The course I'm designing is primarily on the *rhetoric* of the romance (and just plain romance itself)--how it's talked about, portrayed in the media, presented in bookstores, used in advertisting, etc. However, in order to give my students a better sense of the genre as a whole, I'd like to give them reading assignments from the primary source material.

[...] Are there anthologies of diverse short romance fiction out there? Anthologies that have samples from paranormal, suspense, regency, contemporary, even inpsirational? Are there anthologies that incorporate multi-ethnic, interracial, or basically anything other than all-white, all the time romances? If not, can the Bitchery recommend some short stories that I might build into a coursepack for my students? I'd like a diverse sampling from across the genres.

I'm a little concerned about copyright issues, but it occurred to me that problem could be avoided if the students were introduced to a range of online short romance stories. So far I've come up with the following list, some of which I've discussed on this blog previously, but quite a few of which I haven't:

Jo Beverly's The Christmas Wedding Gambit (historical with white, English, heterosexual, aristocratic protagonists)

Jennifer Crusie's Meeting Harold's Father (contemporary, American, heterosexual protagonists)

Lynn Emery's A Darker Shade of Midnight (contemporary romantic suspense paranormal with African-American, heterosexual protagonists)

Eva Gale's The Seduction of Gabriel Stewart (historical erotic inspirational romance, heterosexual white American protagonists)

Matthew Haldeman-Time's Ten Weird Things (contemporary with white gay male American protagonists)

Georgette Heyer's The Black Moth (full-length historical romance with aristocratic, heterosexual, English protagonists)

Monica Jackson's The Choice (paranormal contemporary with heterosexual African-American protagonists)

Jayne Ann Krentz's Congratulations, You've Just Won (contemporary, heterosexual protagonists)

Mercedes Lackey's Balance and its sequel, Dragon's Teeth (fantasy, heterosexual protagonists)

Bettie Sharpe's Ember (erotic romance reworking of a fairytale, paranormal, with heterosexual protagonists)

Linnea Sinclair's Silent Run (which she describes as "futuristic", with heterosexual protagonists) and Tales from the Second Chance Saloon: Macawley's List (science fiction with heterosexual protagonists)

Deborah Smith's Sweet Hope (contemporary, white American heterosexual protagonists)

I think this list includes stories from most of the major romance sub-genres, and includes a variety of different kinds of protagonists. Do you know of any others you'd add to the list? Or if you can think of a print anthology, maybe you could add your suggestion to the comments at the SB's site.


The sampler is from the Museo Vasco, Bilbao and the photo of it can be found at Wikimedia Commons.

Gender and Otherness

Laura Vivanco

You like tomato and I like tomaeto;
Potato, potaeto, tomato, tomaeto!
Let's call the whole thing off!

But oh! If we call the whole thing off,
Then we must part.
And oh! If we ever part,
Then that might break my heart!

(Lyrics from 'Let's Call the Whole Thing Off')

In response to my previous post Ingrid asked

Isn't the Toulouse Lautrec painting you chose of two women?
A strange choice, as you would think there would be even less 'otherness' between same-sex lovers.

First of all, I liked the picture because of its ambiguity. We can't tell whether the couple in the bed are in lust, in love, or have found a comfortable, companionate relationship. In fact, I doubt that many people looking at the painting would even be able to guess that both individuals are female, which, I thought, made it even more thought-provoking and open to multiple interpretations.*

Secondly, I'm not convinced that biological differences between the sexes are the only, or even the most important source of 'otherness', even within heterosexual relationships. I've touched on the difference between 'sex' and 'gender' in the past, here and here, but here's a summary of the difference between the two terms:

One's sexual identity is prenatally organized as a function of the genetic-endocrine forces and emerges (is activated) with development. One's gender identity, recognition of how he or she is viewed in society, develops with post-natal experiences. It comes from general observation of society's norms and expectations and from comparing self with peers [...] and asking: "Who am I like and who am I not like?" "With which group, males/boys or females/girls am I similar or different?" (Diamond 2000)

or, to put it another way,

Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.

Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.

So while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a 'man' or a 'woman' in society can be quite different cross culturally.

The expression of gender, then, differs across societies and has also changed over time. Allen and Feluga have noted that it was

Eighteenth-century medical science paved the way for a strictly binary system of gender by "discovering" the incommensurable differences between male and female bodies. [...] Under this new system of sexual dimorphism, women and men were taken to be one another's opposites in most things. Whereas women were increasingly taken to be passive and passionless, for example, men were taken to be aggressive and sexually charged. Many of the truisms about gender behavior that contemporary sexuality studies works to dismantle (e.g. "boys will be boys") date from this period.

Thus, character or personality differences were divided up between the sexes, reinforcing and strengthening the differences derived from biology. Yet many of the differences between the genders, because they derive from socialisation, have to be learned and are culturally specific. For example,

“Naturally” occurring or not, heterosexuality is highly organized by society and by culture. While you may argue that “heterosexuality is natural” or that you were “just born this way,” women didn’t enter this world knowing they wanted to wear a prom dress, practice something called “dating”, buy a white wedding gown, or play with a “My Size Bride Barbie.” Likewise, men did not exit the womb knowing they would one day have to buy a date a corsage or spend two months’ income to buy an engagement ring. (Ingraham 1999: 3-4)

It is also interesting to note that despite the way in which Male and Female have been set up as opposites, ascribed different personality traits as well as physical difference and turned into the 'Other', many other differences persist which challenge gender's predominance as the main source of 'Otherness'. For example, although 'The nineteenth century was dominated by the idea of "natural" gender distinctions and by a conception of normative sexuality that was centered largely on the middle-class family' (Allen & Feluga), this in itself hints at class differences, and as Ingraham points out, by studying the 'norm' or the 'ideal' we can see which groups are thought to be furthest away from the ideal, 'Othered' as different and inferior:

The images bridal magazines present distort reality and unify particular beliefs about heterosexuality, race, class, and gender. In Bridal Gown Guide (1998), Denise and Alan Fields offer an observation about bridal magazines and race:

Only white people get married. Well, the major bridal magazines would never say that, but just take a look at the pictures. Page after page of Caucasian, size 8 models in $2,000 dresses. Just try to find a bride who’s black, Hispanic or Asian. Go ahead, take as long as you need to search. While you’re at it, try to discover an ad that features a bride who’s a size 22.

Three such industry distortions are revealed by this quote: race, class, and body size. (1999: 92-93)

'Otherness' deriving from non-gendered factors can also be used to intensify sexual attraction, for example I've previously discussed the ways in which a certain degree of racial 'Otherness' is used in romance novels to reinforce the existing gender dichotomy, particularly when the tall, dark, hard and virile sheik or Native American hero with chiselled features is contrasted with the shorter, pale, feminine Caucasian heroine with soft curves.

According to Rosalind Gill and Elena Herdieckerhoff,

One of the key questions might be 'can romance be queered?' in the way that other cultural forms (arguably) have been. This would involve not simply replacing heterosexual protagonists with homosexual ones, but, more fundamentally questioning the very binaries on which conventional romance depends (male/female, gay/straight, virgin/whore, etc) (page 12)

Certainly gay and lesbian romances demonstrate that binary oppositions and a sense of 'Otherness' can exist in relationships where such Otherness is not derived from the biological differences between the sex of the hero and heroine. This is something explored in many of Matthew Haldeman-Time's short stories [and I'd better put in an 'explicit gay sex' warning, for those who might be offended by them]. For example, in Ten Weird Things, we begin by learning that the two protagonists

just had nothing in common. After the first two days of conversation, they were out of things to talk about. Eric watched sports and news and MTV2; David watched sitcoms. Eric listened to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park and Nirvana; David listened to Mozart and Sinatra and the Backstreet Boys. Eric liked to go out and get drunk and party; David liked to stay in the room and read. Eric was thinking about rushing a frat; David planned to apply to med school.

Later, Eric thinks about how he

liked that David was different from himself. He even liked that he didn’t know that much about David, because that meant that he could learn more, and he wanted to learn more. He wanted to know David better.

There's the same theme of otherness in Incredible and its sequel Stupid Question, in which one protagonist is a dedicated swimmer, the other is a goth; 'At 6’4”, Trent was at least six inches taller, and when Jason looked up at him, they both froze in place. Jason’s intense, dark eyes were made even more dramatic with eyeliner, and there was something guarded yet aggressive about his expression. Trent wanted him. He was mysterious'. There are also personality differences:

Trent smiled all of the time, Trent made everybody laugh, Trent made a new friend everywhere that he went. [...] Trent was the guy everyone liked, the guy who pulled off everything effortlessly, the guy who was fun and popular and always had a good time.
Jason didn’t know a lot of people like that. He’d never been that way, himself. He didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. He didn’t make friends easily.

• Allen, Emily & Dino Felluga. 'General Introduction to Theories of Gender & Sex', Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Date of last update, Nov. 28, 2003, Purdue University.
• Diamond, Milton, 2000. 'Sex and Gender: Same or Different?', online version of a paper intended for publication in Feminism & Psychology (2000), 10.1: 46-54.
• Gill. Rosalind & Elena Herdieckerhoff, no date. 'Re-writing the romance? Chick lit after Bridget Jones', a forthcoming paper available in draft from the University of East London's Centre for Narrative Research.
• Ingraham, Chrys, 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture (New York: Routledge).

* There's a description here of how Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings of lesbians became progressively less intimate, less indicative of passion between the couple. The sexual nature of the relationship between the women is immediately apparent in The Kiss (1892), less so in another painting titled In Bed (1892) and in the picture I used to illustrate my previous post, also titled In Bed (1893), one can see even less of the couple's faces or expressions. For the purposes of illustrating the blog post, this particular painting therefore left more space open to be explored by the viewer's imagination.

The image, of many different varieties of tomato, comes from Wikipedia.

Definition of Paranormal Romance

Jane at Dear Author asked me about the definition of paranormal romance, about what that definition might include and what it doesn't. I was surprised at how much I actually ended up writing, and thought that some of my ideas were worth blogging, so here you go.

I think the RWA's definition of romance as a story containing both a central love story, and also an emotionally satisfying AND optimistic ending has to hold true for any romance, no matter the sub-genre. So, as much as Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series may be all about the relationships she has (with SOOOO many men/males), the central focus of each story is not on that one relationship (even if it's a threesome) that can be resolved with a HEA, so the books don't count as romances per se (although I certainly think their success can be attributed to romance readers' interest in the stories because of the focus on relationships, but that's a whole 'nother blog).

So, if we're going to discuss paranormal romance, it is important to remember that the romance is vital to that combination. More on this later.

Paranormal, of course, means "beyond" normal, or anything that cannot be explained by science. I would personally add "in our world," meaning that a totally different world, with magic or whatever, is not paranormal by my definition. For example, then, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake world is paranormal, because it's an alternate expression of our world with paranormal elements. The Lord of the Rings is not paranormal, even though it has magic, because it's an entirely different world. Matthew Haldeman-Time's serial m/m erotica, In This Land (sorry, had to do the plug because it's too incredible not to) is not paranormal, because it's a different world/planet. Other-world novels, then, are Science Fiction or Fantasy, depending on the novel--and I am by no means an expert on that designation. I tend to avoid SF/F.

So, if it's set in any version of our world, in recognizable cities or towns or countries, or in a community that is recognizably "Earth" but Earth that has "beyond science" elements, it's paranormal. There's different levels /types to the definition of paranormal. There's the choice of paranormal elements: stuff that humans can do (telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, magic, etc.) and/or paranormal "monsters" (were-animals, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, fairies/faeries, vampires (oh, the vampires!!), etc.). There's also the choice of level of paranormality: alternative histories, where everyone knows and accepts the paranormal elements (a la Hamilton) vs. stories where paranormal elements are something only a few people possess (a la most of Nora Roberts' and Linda Howard's paranormal stories).

I think, however, that my reason for the distinction between of-this-world stories being paranormal and not-of-this-world stories being SF/F is that a *primary* theme of all paranormal novels is the interaction between the "normal" of our world and the paranormal, between the mundane and the unexplainable. How does the normal woman respond, for example, when she finds out her lover is a vampire/werewolf/witch? How does a normal man respond when he finds out he's not normal when he comes into his previously latent powers or is turned into a paranormal monster? That's the distinction between paranormal and SF/F, for me. If that tension between mundane and paranormal doesn't exist, it's not a paranormal novel, even if it is set in our world. If it were an alternative history of our world where EVERYONE were paranormal, that would still be fantasy because the tension between mundane and paranormal would not exist. Hamilton's Anita Blake stories are paranormal because there are normal people and the tension of most of the novels is Anita dealing with the fact that her powers make her increasingly paranormal, increasingly "one of the monsters" rather than a normal human being. Her Merry Gentry series is not paranormal, for me, but rather fantasy, because although it starts in "our" world, most of the action takes place in a totally other world (like C.S. Lewis's Narnia series), and, more importantly, the tension of the books is not located in the clash between mundane and paranormal.

(Time travel novels, then, would seem to straddle this divide. The primary tension is in the clash between two mundane cultures separated by time, rather than by mundane/paranormal elements. So both the time traveler and the non-time traveler are mundane, but their meeting is brought about by paranormal elements. I don't consider that true paranormal. I think they're a very different genre from paranormal. But that might just be me. Suzanne Brockmann's Time Enough for Love is a brilliant time travel that is more science fiction based than the "magickal" elements of time travel in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, but in both of those, the hero and heroine are both mundane. The culture shock aspect is there, and the decision to live with the world-out-of-synch is there for the characters, but it's somehow fundamentally different for me from paranormal romance.)

My favorite paranormal series at the moment is J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books--and I'm obviously not alone there. While the stories take place mostly in the "world" of the Brotherhood, that world is still hidden from the "normal" world and one of the tensions is the need to keep it hidden from ordinary humans. And all the relationships so far (and the future relationships that we know of) focus on the tension of mundane meets paranormal. In Dark Lover Beth might be vampire, but she doesn't know it until she makes the change. The heroines in Lover Eternal and Vishous's book (although NOT, as has been pointed out to me, Lover Awakened), and the hero in Lover Revealed are all human and the tension between human and vampire represents much of the tension in the novels. (It'll be fascinating to see if Ward ever does a book in which both characters have always known they're vampires.)

Putting these two elements together, then, a paranormal romance is a novel focusing on a close relationship in which the primary mundane vs. paranormal tension is explored between the partners in the relationship. So while a story in which both characters know of, understand, and believe in the paranormal elements of the world would technically be "paranormal," it might not be a paranormal romance because why have a romance with paranormal elements if the mundane/paranormal tension does not effect the relationship? In a paranormal romance, then, by my definition, at least one character must believe they are mundane (whether or not they are) and have to struggle within the relationship with the tension between mundane and paranormal. This definition can be represented in any number of ways, but that's what I come to when I actually try to parse out my personal understanding of the combination phrase "paranormal romance." If you think of most of Nora Roberts' paranormals (I haven't read the Morrigan's Cross series, so I can't speak for those) and Linda Howard's paranormals, each and every relationship has to get over the "I don't believe you are a ______/I don't believe you can do ________" stage. That's what makes them paranormal, in my opinion.

The climax of a paranormal novel can be the mundane partner in the relationship accepting the paranormal aspects in their lives, or it can be the antagonist getting what comes to him/her, usually with the help of the paranormal elements, after the mundane partner has accepted the paranormal, but the tension of the main relationship needs to be heavily invested in the tension between the mundane and the paranormal.

So there you have it. Does anyone else have a more or less inclusive definition of paranormal romance? How do you separate paranormal romances from Science Fiction romances or Fantasy romances? Is paranormal just anything that isn't perfectly normal? What about Time Travel romances?