What is paranormal romance? Paranormal romance is any love story in which one of the lovers, or the world around them, is not quite human: vampires, shapeshifters, witches, ghosts, fae, demons, reapers, sirens, and beings that refuse a label. It is the broadest of the supernatural romance shelves and, by a long way, the most…
6 min read
What is vampire romance? Vampire romance is a love story between a mortal and an immortal who needs blood to live. The three things that make the vampire dangerous, the hunger, the centuries, and the fact that one of them will outlive the other, are also the three things that make the romance work. That…
7 min read
What is dark fantasy romance? Dark fantasy romance is a love story set in a fantasy world where magic has a price, power is dangerous, and the romance has to survive both. The “dark” is a measure of consequence, not of how explicit the story is. That consequence looks like bargains that bind, courts that…
8 min read
A romance trope is a recurring situation readers recognise on sight: enemies who become lovers, one bed, a bond nobody chose. Tropes are not clichés; they are promises. A reader who picks up an enemies to lovers story knows what feeling she is buying, and the writer’s job is to deliver it in a way…
6 min read
What is dark romance? Dark romance is a love story that reaches its happy ending through territory most romance avoids: obsession, revenge, power that is not shared equally, and characters whose choices you can understand without endorsing. Two people still end up together, and the ending is still earned. The road there is darker, the…
10 min read
Niamh Brennan did not believe in the old gods. This was ironic, given that one of them had been following her for the better part of a year. She first noticed the crow in January, perched on the railing of her balcony in Galway, watching her through the glass door with an intelligence that no…
9 min read
The shop at 17 Veil Street had no sign. This was deliberate. The people who needed to find it would find it, drawn by word of mouth passed in undertones at kitchen tables and whispered across pharmacy counters when the pharmacist had nothing left to offer. The people who did not need to find it…
11 min read