When My Favorite Genre Meets My New Favorite Trope by @imMirandaMartin

When my favorite genre meets my new favorite trope

SFR + RH = Night of the Reverse Harem

by Miranda Martin

Have you ever read a book that just opened you up to a whole new trope and it became all you wanted to read, eat, sleep and breathe? That just happened to me recently with reverse harem paranormal romances. It started with Jaymin Eve’s Curse of the Gods series and I swear I’ve been reading them non-stop since then.

I loved them so much I thought about writing one and made a post to my facebook and newsletter followers asking if they’d be interested in reading one from me. The response was overwhelming! I even had my bestie author friend Lee Savino contact me and tell me she’s been wanting to write RH too. She asked if I’d be interested in a co-branded release effort and thus Night of the Reverse Harem was born.

It grew a little from there and now there are eight authors participating, Lee Savino, Golden Angel, Aubrey Cara, Renee Rose & Rebel West, Ava Sinclair, Lili Zander and myself. We're all taking our specific alien/shifters and writing standalone reverse harem stories in our worlds.

It’s been great fun writing mine. I dreamed up four hot alpha males, each with their own personalities and figured out how I could work into my established series a girl who gets all four of them.

♥♥♥

I asked my friends why they love SFR and what they’re bringing to the genre with these RH novels and here’s what they had to say:

Lee Savino: I write SFR because I can address themes like love, war, redemption, class struggle in an alternate context. Oh and big aliens with giant *equipment* are hot AF. According to one theory of anthropology, the first human communities were polyamorous, centering around one woman who was supported and provided for by a whole community. Also, writing about multiple guys wanting to give you orgasms is hot.

Aubrey Cara: I can go on and on about this!! There’s so many possibilities open in SFR!

Short answer, I write SFR because it combines my two favorite things, science fiction and romance. Aliens, check. Space travel and advanced science technology, check. Humans and aliens thrown together in unusual circumstances and finding love, double check!

What do I bring? Hopefully a fresh look at old themes. Lots of upgraded genitalia, lots of interspecies loving, and worlds that a reader can lose themselves in. And that’s my short, simple answer.

Renee Rose: One thing I love about SFR is that I can go more non-con in a made up world. I love dominant alpha males and the subjugated female who ends up stealing their hearts and bringing them to their knees. :)

The RH theme offers so many possibilities for relationship complications, entanglements, domination and pleasure. I love the idea of so much focus being on the female and how she ends up thriving with the dominance, love and care of so many males.

Ava Sinclair: I write SFR for the World building. I love the unfettered creativity, and how the environment shapes the story. What I want to bring to the genre with a RH story is characterization. The external influences of the Drakoryan world combined with the interplay of one woman and her multiple mates makes for conflict and growth potential.

Lili Zander: I write SFR because I love world-building and creating new civilizations, including civilizations that are set up perfectly for reverse harems!

Golden Angel: I love writing in a world of limitless possibilities, where anything I can imagine and justify is something I can include. I can change body parts, mess around with customs, create entirely new cultures, and still find all the ways to relate it back to humanity. Sure the hero might be an alien with some crazy fun genitalia or some other significant physical or cultural difference, but deep down he just wants love too!

I think the RH theme works particularly well with Sci-Fi and Fantasy because we can make the culture anything we want. What is taboo to human society can be completely normal in an alien one, and of course there's the inevitable culture clash and eventually acceptance. Because who doesn't want multiple hot men worshiping them and seeing to their every need?

♥♥♥

The first book to release will be on Valentine’s Day! Night of the Dragons: A Reverse Harem Romance (Red Planet Dragons of Tajss)

Broken pod, wrecked ship, no water in sight. But Piper Sage is a survivor. 

Diagnosed with an aggressive terminal cancer, the doctors on board her generational spaceship had no choice but to put her in stasis, hoping to keep her alive until a cure could be found. When she wakes, it's not to a miracle but a nightmare. Two blazing suns, nothing but sand and more sand.

There's no way she's going to just give up and die. Not a chance. 

But long unused muscles and pale skin are making it impossible on this treacherous red planet.

Salvation comes in the form of four powerful dragon-men. Enormous, seven-foot walls of muscle with wings and tails and scales, these four have decided to be Piper's protectors. 

The only trouble is they don't want to share. 

Kaidan, Ejder, Anguis and Mikhos are all possessively alpha and will do anything to be the one who gets to claim Piper as his treasure. She's got other ideas.

After all, why choose one when you can have them all?

Night of the Dragons is a fully standalone novel. This is a TRUE reverse harem romance, NOT a love triangle. Expect steam, adventure, smoking hot alien-dragons and a feisty red-headed heroine.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Night-Dragons-Reverse-Romance-Planet-ebook/dp/B0794KNPY7

Night of the Shayde by Lili Zander: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0793BRTG9

Night of the Berserkers by Lee Savino:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0792LPV7V

Night of the Wild Stags by Golden Angel:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0793GXW1J/

Night of the Zandians by Renee Rose & Rebel West

Night of the Monrok by Aubrey Cara

Night of the Drakoryans by Ava Sinclair

About Miranda Martin

Country girl, military vet, artistic soul and lover of all things science fiction. Now writes bestselling scifi romance. Lives in Kansas City with her husband and children.

Stalk me in all the places!

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(All views expressed are those of Miranda Martin and don't necessarily reflect those of the SFRB)

It's SFR Galaxy Awards Day!

The 2017 SFR Galaxy Awards recipients will be announced today in seven rounds, beginning with a welcome message at 8:00 AM EST (USA), and featuring an award round every hour beginning at 10:00 AM EST.

Tomorrow marks the sixth year these awards have been presented, and includes a special tribute to late SF/F author Ursula K. Le Guin who passed on January 22, 2018. Her words were the inspiration for these unique awards.

As the posts are made, the links to each individual round will be added below. The schedule is as follows:

2017 SFR Galaxy Awards Welcome Message

Round 1 - 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time - Chris Stock

Round 2 - 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time - Heather Massey

Round 3 - 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time - Marlene Harris

Round 4 -  1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time - Riley Moreland

Round 5 -  2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time - Jo Jones

Round 6 -  3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time - Lee Koven

Round 7 -  4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time - Anna McLain

You can help celebrate the awards by commenting on the awards rounds, and sharing the announcement links and information on social media.

SFRB Recommends #79: The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass #writing #craft

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.

Topics covered include:

• emotional modes of writing
• beyond showing versus telling
• your story's emotional world
• moral stakes
• connecting the inner and outer journeys
• plot as emotional opportunities
• invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language
• cascading change
• story as emotional mirror
• positive spirit and magnanimous writing
• the hidden current that makes stories move

Readers remember books that make them feel. A good romance novel needs to make sure it evokes the right feelings at the right points in the story. How do you make the HEA satisfying? How do you convince the reader that the leads love each other?

Maass goes through many different techniques to up the emotional punch of a scene, character, or overall plot. Some may apply more to your work than others. There are enough of said techniques, though, that most writers should be able to find some effective.

This recommendation by Lee Koven.

To Trope, or Not to Trope @LexxxChristian

by Alexandra Christian

You can’t talk about the romance genre without talking about tropes. Tropes are certain conventions that appear in literature. Those comfortable little plot points that we can nestle down in and escape. Some people are of the opinion that tropes are bad. That our jobs as writers are to break new ground and blow those tired old tropes out of the water. And I can definitely understand that point of view. I like to read different stories that aren’t like every story I’ve read before. But I can also appreciate the familiarity of a tried and true trope that makes the story an escape.

We all love things we can predict sometimes. Take the success of Midsomer Murders. It’s a British detective series that’s been running for a thousand years. If you watch it on a regular basis, you start to notice a formula: a body is found, Inspector Barnaby is called away from some quirky family business to investigate, they talk to everyone in the village that has reason to want the person dead, you think you know who the murderer is until that person gets murdered before the commercial break, the killer ends up being the person you least expected, and we all live happily ever after. People tune in for it week after week because the comfort of that formula is there.

Tropes do this for romantic stories in a very effective way. We want there to be twists and turns, but we have basic elements that we look for when we start searching for a new favorite read. Here are some of my favorites:

1. MC in peril: Phoe Addison, the heroine of Naked, fits in easily with this trope. She is a woman that is in danger from outside forces and needs Cage’s help. I love these stories because the lovers are thrown together in difficult circumstances. They grow to rely on one another and their relationship grows through their teamwork at solving the larger problem. 
2. Fairytales: As a child, fairytales were my favorite kind of story. Incidentally, fairytales are often romances at their core (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast… need I go on?). As a romance genre trope, the fairytale stories are often updated to present day, or transported to different settings or times in history. I love writing fairytales, as is evident in my books Beast of Burden and Huntress. In Beast, it’s an erotic retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” where the hero, Marek, is a werewolf. For Huntress, I found a very old Scandinavian dragon story for the basis of hero Malik’s redemption.
3. Performers: Stories where one of the protagonists is a performer of some sort (actor, musician, etc.). Sometimes they’re called celebrity romances. I think we can all identify with those. I know that I’ve been mentally dating Benedict Cumberbatch for years now. I wrote a short, summery piece called Mr. Hollywood about a romance novelist in Bora Bora who meets her celebrity crush and has a little rendezvous. Gee… I wonder where I got the idea for that?
4. Virgin: This trope can be controversial if the author doesn’t get the ages right. For me, the key to these kinds of stories is the slow-burning romance between the two main characters. Showcasing the alpha hero’s tenderness with an unsure lover can always bake my muffins. I tried to incorporate this trope a little in Naked with Phoe and Cage’s first love scene. Phoe is not very experienced and has been sheltered most of her life. She doesn’t come right out and say that she’s a virgin, but the concept is there. More obvious is in the first installment of my Queen Joanna series, The Virgin Queen. It’s a medieval romance where the heroine Joanna is married off to the king, who she assumes is a cold, disfigured brute. He turns out to be quite the opposite and their story is probably one of my more luscious stories.
5. Protector: I know, you’re going to take away my feminist card, but I love this trope. A story where the hero has to protect the heroine in some way-- those make me melt. Now, that’s not to say that in the same story, the heroine can’t turn around and rescue him right back. In Naked, Phoe is very timid at the beginning and Cage steps up and protects her from the men chasing her and from the terrible creatures that try to kill them. She’s terrified at the prospect of leaving her home and is paying this “big strong man” to help her through it. Of course, by the end, Phoe becomes a badass in her own right and has to help Cage out of some sticky situations.

So tropes can be useful tools in choosing stories as well as writing them. They can also be traps, so choose wisely. The trick is to take those comfortable tropes and give them a twist that will make them stand out from the rest.

 

BACK...

Macijah "Cage" St. John' didn't want the spy life anymore. He would have been thrilled to spend every morning lying in the field behind Phoe's home in smalltown Louisiana watching the clouds roll by. But his Miss Addison wanted to spread her wings, literally. So Cage accepted a mission that teamed him up with his lady love. If only he had trusted her.

TO THE FUTURE

Everything about being a spy was a million times more exciting, and scarier, than the books she'd read in her former life as a librarian. When her first mission with Cage turned into a colossal clusterf*ck because he withheld information and kept secrets, Phoebe's world narrowed into a long tunnel of betrayal. Captured by space pirates and delivered to a horrible fate, she wished the last words between them had been of love, because she was certain she would never see Cage St. John again.

 

About the Author:

Alexandra Christian is an author of mostly romance with a speculative slant. Her love of Stephen King and sweet tea has flavored her fiction with a Southern Gothic sensibility that reeks of Spanish moss and deep fried eccentricity. Lexx likes to keep her fingers in lots of different pies having written everything from sci-fi and horror to Sherlock Holmes adventures. 

A self-proclaimed “Southern Belle from Hell,” Lexx is a native South Carolinian who lives with an epileptic wiener dog and her husband, author Tally Johnson. Her long-term aspirations are to one day be a best-selling authoress and part-time pinup girl. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America.

Website: http://lexxxchristian.wixsite.com/alexandrachristian

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b5c_Un

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthernBellefromHell/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4684601.Alexandra_Christian

Amazon Author Central:

https://www.amazon.com/Alexandra-Christian/e/B009QU3UD4/