Comments on: Aged Out of Paranormals?

By: Virginia DeMarce

Virginia DeMarce — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:03:13 +0000

Being a “mature” (as a cough, that’s 72 next month) woman, I have to say that the distinction between 23 and 28 looks a bit minuscule from my perspective. If I insisted on romances with women my age or older, I’d actually be **limited** to some of the paranormals

By: lisa g

lisa g — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:44:48 +0000

I’m in my early 50′s and I’ve been reading and loving paranormals for a long time. Lynne Viehl’s heroines are also more mature, with life experience, as are a lot of Christine Feehan’s heroines. Larissa Ione, Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Ilona Andrews, and Jeaniene Frost all write some great heroines with varying life experiences. Being young doesn’t denote level of maturity. Karen Marie Moning took Mac from an immature young woman to a very mature, seasoned young woman over the course of her 5-book story arc. The list of great paranormal authors goes on and on. These are but a few that I haven’t seen mentioned yet that I think are worthy of reading.

By: AAR Lynn

AAR Lynn — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:52:50 +0000

I like some of those heroines, too. However, some of those authors, such as Armstrong or Briggs, I would see as urban fantasy more than PNR(hmm…the dividing line between those two subgenres would be fun thing to chat about someday.) The heroines in urban fantasy definitely tend not to be fainting flowers, I’ve noticed. I think that’s why I like more than a few of them.

By: NBLibGirl

NBLibGirl — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 02:02:34 +0000

I agree with the posters who argue that it isn’t so much age as strength and independence that make characters interesting, particularly in the face of strong/bossy heroes. My favorite PNR heroines are characters like Armstrong’s Elena, Brigg’s Mercy Thompson, Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, and Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty. Two characters come to mind that may be actually in their 30s are Mary – from JR Ward’s Lover Eternal; and Raven Whitney from Feehan’s Dark Prince?

By: Becky

Becky — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:38:50 +0000

I have to agree. I too enjoy the vampires and werewolves and am waiting for my Prince Vampire to come. I find too many books have the naive, immature young female character, and over powering male character. Its not just in Paranormal, look at 50 Shades of Grey and other hyped books. The only ones I see where they use more older and mature heroins are many of your historical romances. I love them all and just let it slide that they are all immature virgins

By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 21:44:37 +0000

I 100% agree with everything Louise says. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

By: Jacqueline Webb

Jacqueline Webb — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:05:00 +0000

Can I just butt in here? I don’t know if I’m allowed to advertise here and apologies if not, but I have recently published a paranormal romance ‘SOPHRONIA AND THE VAMPIRE’ with e-publishers LYRICAL PRESS under my pen name JACQUELINE FARRELL. The heroine is nearly 50, because I had recently attained such a great age(!) and while I love Buffy and Sookie, I had reached the point where I just felt a bit weird having to identify with a young woman in her twenties when I was way beyond that. Sophronia is a crone, a witch in the third stage of the goddess Triad, a real fifty year old. (not a 600year old 20 year old vampire/shape-shifter and so on) complete with all the joys of incipient menopause because that’s what I’m going through at the moment. The male character is a 2000 year old vampire. I’d love to know if there are any other paranormal romances out there that actually feature women of my age. I did send it to one agent about a year ago and she rejected it because she said she’d already got authors on her lists with older heroines , but I’ve never seen any myself. For more info check out my message on the writers news forum message board.

By: lauren

lauren — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:43:49 +0000

As a died in the wool historic romance reader I am also finding that I am being drawn more and more to paranormal…I think it has something to do with “escape the reality of life thingy”.

By: Lilly

Lilly — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:43:19 +0000

I totally get the attraction of paranormal heros to contemporary innocent, naive young human heroines. For most of their paranormal centuries of lifespan, there would have been no such thing. Through most of history a female by young adulthood would have assisted at the birth of infants, listened to her parents’ make love, slaughtered countless animals, watched a quarter of the village die slow, agonizing pre-antibiotic deaths, gone hungry for a couple of months, hidden for three days to keep from getting raped by an invading army and most likely buried a parent and a couple siblings.

By: Lisa R

Lisa R — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:17:22 +0000

ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD is quite good. The hero is a 17-year-old ghost hunter (no werewolves or vampires). The heroine is the very deadly ghost he’s supposed to dispatch.