The start of paranormal romance

[arianne]

Any idea of which series/book was the one that sort of triggered the current paranormal romance trend (aka Twilight, Hunger Games etc)? I think the Sookie books were around before Twilight, but I doubt that they were the first. I've heard that maybe the Anita Blake series could have been the start of it (although there are people who also claim that it was the start of the current urban fantasy trend as well).

(My friend just said Beauty and the Beast was the first paranormal romance. Uh...not really what I had in mind... )

[LizW65]

Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunters series, maybe? The first one came out in '02. There have been many fantasy novels with romantic elements prior to that, of course, but I think it's one of the earlier long-running series in which the romance is front-and-center.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I think Anita Blake has to be blamed for both paranormal romance as a big thing from the genre SF/F end, and for "urban fantasy" meaning things like the Dresden Files rather than things like Swordspoint.  Paranormal romance coming out of romance as a genre, I don't know - I do not read genre romance, i don't generally find it satisfying - but that does seem to be a distinct thing still.

[meg_evonne]

Does Dark Shadows back in the 60's count? Pretty sure they wrote companion books...

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Does Dark Shadows back in the 60's count? Pretty sure they wrote companion books...

I'd count it as a precursor, but it didn't directly and immediately inspire a genre.

[Snowleopard]

I kinda think Paranormal Romance descended down out of several different things - TV, movies, and other  books.

[arianne]

I seem to remember that ten years ago there was a time when no paranormal romance novels could be found, and then suddenly it seems like they're showing up everywhere, and there are whole sections in bookstores dedicated to the genre.

I thought maybe someone would be able to tell me which was sort of the "first" paranormal romance centered book, or perhaps tell me which was the sort of "it starts here" work (for example, in my mind, the "it starts here" work of epic fantasy was Lord of the Rings. For detective novels, it would be the Sherlock Holmes works.)

[ItsallSuesfault]

Well I know the YA Paranormal Romance started with the glitterpires. May they burn in a enternal hell.
My best guess for the Adult ones would be Anita Blake.

[Snowleopard]

I saw a T-shirt design somewhere that I loved.
It said - Spike don't sparkle - with an image of our favorite blond vampire.

[ItsallSuesfault]

Snowleopard. I'm a guy and I want that shirt.

There was also when that said and buffy staked edward. The end. Unfortunatley that ended up in a no win battle with a bottle of bleach.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I saw a T-shirt design somewhere that I loved.
It said - Spike don't sparkle - with an image of our favorite blond vampire.

I think I want the Aziraphale and Crowley reading Twilight one:

"But vampires don't sparkle !"
"You're not using enough gunpowder."

[OZ]

I don't know that a single author's work can be determined to be a starting point for a trend. It partly depends on exactly how you define the genre you are talking about. It is not always easy for me to differentiate between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. I feel some stories definitely belong in one genre or the other but many blur the lines. We could probably spend pages and pages arguing which genre Sookie Stackhouse or Kate Daniels books belong in and in the end most people would still cling to whatever they originally believed. I personally saw the Anne Rice vampire stories as the start of the urban fantasy trend with the Anita Blake books building on them. Sookie Stackhouse came soon after. I still see the first book in the "Dead" series as a spoof on the Anne Rice books and maybe a little on the LKH books as well.

[arianne]

I personally define "paranormal romance" as any work that has romance as one of the main plot points. "Urban fantasy" would be a work that takes place in a modern urban setting and contains elements of fantasy characters/worlds/etc. For example, most people would probably say that Harry Dresden is urban fantasy (although in some places I know DF is placed under "sci-fi), but I doubt that any of them would class it as paranormal romance.

Anita Blake for me would definitely be paranormal romance, as would Sookie Stackhouse and Kate Daniels. A general rule of thumb I use is, if the main character is spending more than one in five pages thinking exclusively about the guy she loves/should not love but has feelings for/thinks she hates but really loves/etc, then it's a paranormal romance.

(btw, little side question, but has anyone ever come across a paranormal romance with a male as the main character? To the best of my knowledge, all paranormal romances have females as their protagonists.)

[Snowleopard]

And now a brief pause for something...well...that doesn't sparkle.


Pauses to put out drool buckets.

It'sallSue'sfault - I found pics of the Spike don't sparkle t-shirt but I couldn't
seem to track down where to find/buy it.  Sorry, I did try.

[LizW65]

Wikipedia has this to say on the subject:

The first futuristic romance to be marketed by a mainstream romance publisher, Jayne Ann Krentz's Sweet Starfire, was published in 1986 and was a "classic road trip romance" which just happened to be set in a separate galaxy.[8] This genre has become much more popular since 2000. Krentz attributes the popularity of this subgenre to the fact that the novels "are, at heart, classic historical romances that just happen to be set on other worlds."