While modern parannormal romance and urban fantasy is filled with vampire hunters, I love the idea of an old-fashioned exorcist. My guest today, Tawny Stokes, is here to talk about how she gave a face-lift to the old trope. Comment and you could win a free copy of the THE DEMON WHISPERER.

Guest Post by Tawny Stokes

I love me some monsters. The more the merrier in my opinion. I’ve been reading monster fiction since I could read. My literary mainstay as a child was Stephen King, John Saul, Dean Koontz. Which probably says a lot about me and why I write what I write. Just about every book I’ve ever written has had a monster or two in it. Sometimes they are bad, and sometimes they are good. Sometimes they are the main character and sometimes they are the villain.

My lastest book the DEMON WHISPERER has a pretty good monster factor. Caden Butcher is an exorcist you see, he’s knee deep in the 3 Ds, demon, death and destruction. In this book he’s dealing with all kinds of stuff, like vengeful demons, the undead, and a rather malicious zombie named Uncle Eldon. It’s his girlfriend, Aspen’s, uncle. She’s a necromancer and she accidentlally rose him and can’t put him back. Oh, and Caden’s BFF is a charming demon named Dan, who looks a lot like Sid Vicious.

So here is my monster list:

Demon – both bad and good
Necromancer – good
Zombies – good and very very bad (Uncle Eldon)
Jinn – bad

Do you like monster fiction? What’s your favorite monster to read about?

I will give 3 copies (ebooks only) of my book Demon Whisperer, to commenters.

Bio: Tawny Stokes has always been a writer. From an early age, she’d spin tales of serial killers in love, vampires taking over the world, and sometimes about fluffy bunnies turned bunnicidal maniacs.  An honour student in high school, with a penchant for math and English, you’d never know it by the foot high blue Mohawk and Doc Martens, which often got her into trouble.  No longer a Mohawk wearer, Tawny still enjoys old school punk rock, trance, zombie movies, teen horror films, and fluffy bunnies.  She lives in Canada with her fantastical daughter, two cats, and spends most of her time creating new stories for teens.  Her current YA books are Static and Demon Whisperer.  www.tawnystokes.com
Tawny also writes adult paranormal/urban fantasy fiction under the name Vivi Anna, and is an aspiring screenwriter.

Here’s a neat article on why we create monsters. And it comes with a fascinating video!

Cross-posted from My Overstuffed Bookshelf

The Westermarck effect is an observed biological phenomenon demonstrating that children raised in close proximity may shy away from one another as romantic mates once they reach adulthood. This is apparently true whether or not the children are related by blood. This might be because, as the old adage goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Or it might be because part of adult sexual attraction is that our partner is, in some sense, a stranger.

If all the movie montages in romantic comedies are correct–and Hollywood would never lie–part of the pleasure in falling in love is turning a stranger into an intimate. All those romantic walks in the park, the games of strip poker, the cooking together in a kitchen that’s too small…they’re romantic encounters because they help us to know our mates, perhaps as they’ve never been known before.

People have been known to fall in love at first sight. Sometimes over the course of a weekend, or after a few weeks of dates. This seems like a remarkably short time to really get to know someone. Given the compressed nature of falling in love, a cynic might ask, how can any woman ever know her man as well as the family that raised him? How can she truly know him better than he’s ever been known before?

Quite simply, I would argue. Because on the day he falls in love with her, he isn’t the same man he was the day before. She too, is completely changed. Love is a transformative experience. An evolution of personality. At its best, it opens our minds to new experiences and ways of thinking we’ve never allowed before. At its worst, it can make us more insular and selfish. Either way, in subtle but real ways, lovers become strangers to everyone else, even as they become more transparent to the person they love. What’s more, they divulge secrets to one another–secrets they’ve hidden from others, or perhaps even from themselves.

No where is this issue of identity in romance addressed more effectively than in the genre of paranormal romance. The sense of otherness is almost immediately established. Lovers aren’t just different genders, or from different worlds; they might not even be the same species. Vampires, werewolves, animal shifters, angels, demons, and various immortals…they are fundamentally other, and that alone may account for their sexual appeal.

In spite of technology’s ability break down all social boundaries between what we would like to keep private and what the world must see, we all still wear different masks for different people. And for some of us, that can be quite isolating. Paranormal romance takes this idea and exaggerates it. Often, paranormal romance heroes and heroines have been hiding their otherness from the world. Being able to finally confess it–to be loved not for the facade they show the rest of the world, but for the very strangeness that would make them an outcast in society–those are some of the basic building blocks of true intimacy.

Another identity-based theme in paranormal romance is the acceptance of self, in order to find love with someone else. Most paranormal creatures labor under dark and angsty self-loathing. Oh, woe is me, I’m going to be beautiful, if pale, forever, and I have the desire to drink blood…

Then along comes a heroine (because let’s just admit it, it’s usually the heroine who comes to the emotional rescue) and she helps him to see who he really is. He isn’t just a brooding malcontent…he’s a fierce predator who can use his vampiric powers for good! Why, she makes him see his own inner god. And in turn, he helps acquaint her with her own inner goddess.

In my debut novel, Poisoned Kisses, I played with the issue of identity in an open and notorious way. My hero is a shape-shifting modern-day hydra who can wear the face of anyone who has ever hurt him. My heroine is a dark nymph of the underworld who can make mortals see whatever she wants them to see. When she meets our hero, she chooses to appear to him as a woman he once loved, and it’s a terrible deception. Throughout the book, the heroine and hero transform themselves into people of different coloring and races, all in an effort to shield their own hearts. When they finally kiss for the first time, without any masks, with their real selves exposed, it’s magic. I’m not sure I could have accomplished that in any other genre.

I suspect Supernatural might have something to do with this, but it looks like the new trend is going to be angels. I personally find them more fascinating than vampires, but maybe that’s just because of a certain angel in a trench coat. What interests me most about this is the socio-political implications:

“As we understand it, angel books are appealing to the same people who were reading so-called misery memoirs,” says Michelle Pilley, MD and publisher of Hay House, which publishes angelic bestsellers by Jacky Newcomb and Doreen Virtue.

Tales of tragic childhoods were big sellers in recent years, but since the recession sales of the genre have dropped dramatically. According to supermarkets, where misery memoirs have always sold strongly, the same readers have turned to angels instead.

These angel books particularly appeal to people who do not feel a connection to traditional religion. “I think people find (angels) very approachable,” says Pilley.

“They’re very accessible. People study the different archangels and their different attributes, and they feel they can have a direct personal connection to these angels in a way they may not be able to do with a God. You have personal (guardian) angels, who are (devoted to) you as an individual, and people without strong religious faith may not feel God has such a personal interest.”