This week, bestselling author Jennifer Probst started a new series with Dante’s Fire, a story that found her in a most unlikely way — through her son’s interest in superheroes. What’s a contemporary romance writer to do when paranormal elements start making an appearance in her story? In Jennifer’s experience, just go with it!
More from Jennifer:
I don’t write paranormals.
I’m just a contemporary sort of girl. I find life and relationships so rich without any outside interference such as vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or anything else, it never occurred to me to even try my hand at writing one.
Until readers began to tell me I wrote one with Dante’s Fire.
I fought it. Said, nope, it’s just a twist on a contemporary romance. I said it has a touch of paranormal.
Until the lightbulb came on, and I realized I was defending categorizing a book I had written when it really didn’t matter.
The story mattered.
I once told someone I never read paranormals. Until I devoured every single on of JR Ward’s Black Daggerhood series. Or I got hooked on a shifter erotic romance I just happened to pick up. Or enjoyed the phychic corporation of Jayne Ann Krentz’s world.
Are these paranormal? Does it matter?
Not really. It’s about story. The characters. The passion between the hero and heroine. Trying to push things into a category helps readers sift through the overwhelming mass of books available to try and narrow down thier interests, but Dante’s Fire became my ultimate challenge.
I just wrote a story that called to me.
My boys inspired me to research superheroes and I spent a lot of time at the computer finding their weaknesses, strengths, and pain of their past. I wanted to create a human with a special power that called only to me. I did. I wrote it in two weeks, because I couldn’t stop. And when I got to the end, I realized I had created something that would be part of a series.
Crap. Didn’t mean to do that. Have no time with my writing deadlines. But there was more to tell, and explore, so I need to follow the muse. Down that thorny, twisty path that made no sense but was too intriguing not to try.
Dante’s Fire taught me something important about being a writer, and a reader.
If it’s a great story, the readers will come.
If it’s a great story, the writer will write it, no matter what the category or genre or whether it will sell, or not.
In both worlds, sometimes we need to take risks, in both our reading and writing.
I hope you enjoy Dante’s Fire and the world I created.
