Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Boo!

Today on Romance Magicians, Carla Swafford talks about superstitions and the paranormal. Do you have any superstitions? Have you ever had a paranormal experience? Drop by the blog and share your experiences in the comments section. (You can read about my one superstition and my lone paranormal experience there, too).

Speaking of paranormal experiences, as most of you know, FORBIDDEN TERRITORY and the other two books in my Browning Sisters series (send "buy the second book" vibes to my editor, please!) feature three sisters with paranormal gifts. I'm currently working on the third sister's story, working title DEADLY ILLUSION. The story will introduce thriller/international intrigue elements that I plan to develop further in a spin-off series that I've talked about in previous blog entries.

However, in the midst of writing DEADLY ILLUSION, I've introduced an international organization involved in paranormal research that may have a dark ulterior motive for their activities. There's a sort of DaVinci Code sensibility to the concept, I'm told (not having read the book or seen the movie)--a secret society with a public face that portrays one thing and a private face that has completely different motives.

Goodness knows, this is probably the right time to ride the DaVinci Code wave, and I can see dozens of ways to use this organization to complicate matters in the proposed series of connected books. But if do, will I risk getting pigeon-holed as a paranormal writer? Because I do have non-paranormal stories inside me, and I don't want to be kept from telling them by reader expectations. And I don't want to have to include a paranormal element in every book in the series, either.

Will so many paranormal stories early in my career limit my ability to write other types of stories for Intrigue? Should I pitch a non-paranormal, non-series-related story sitting on my hard drive to break things up, or should I go straight to the series with the bounce (assuming it gets bought) of DEADLY ILLUSION?

What do y'all think?

1 comment:

Jennifer McKenzie said...

I don't think so. Look at Lucy Monroe. She writes all kinds of books. Check her out if you get the chance.