The Playground of the Paranormal

by Liza Street

I’ve been writing shifter romance since 2016—a little earlier if you count some terrible books which shall never see the light of day. However, I started reading shifter romance much earlier than that, probably in the early 2000s. 

Early into my reading, I found that I loved the different paranormal “worlds” almost as much as the characters themselves. They each had their own set of rules, and I was eager to figure them out with each new series I picked up.

My Fierce Mates universe has a few rules that I wanted to follow from the start. 

1. I wanted my shifters to be apex predators
2. clothes don’t shift with my shifters
3. there is no shifter virus—you’re either born a shifter or you don’t shift
4. shifters can sense lies and other emotions along with having heightened senses
5. the “mundane” world is unaware of shifters and supernatural beings in general.

None of these rules is original in and of itself—I’m not treading new ground or anything like that.

Why have the rules to begin with? Isn’t it limiting? What if I want a hamster shifter? What if a story is just begging for a hapless heroine to be bitten by a wolf so she can become one, herself? Some might think that having the rules in place, and continuing them through several series, would be limiting. For me, however, it has been freeing. When I know the boundaries, I can play through them, stretching my universe where allowed. At times, I can subvert those rules. Shifters can sense lies…but what happens if they meet someone who can successfully lie to them? I tried that in my book Ruthless Misfit and I loved how it turned out. The hero, also a shifter, had been forced to hone dishonesty by a terrible childhood.

When I first started writing shifter romance, in my Sierra Pride series, the only paranormal beings present were shifters. But I never specifically said that vampires didn’t exist, so when I wanted to expand the universe in the Corona Pride series, I was able to do that. Recently, witches were added to the mix, and beings with different abilities, too. 

Why not have these other supernatural characters from the start? To be honest, when I started in 2016, I didn’t know how far I was going to take my Fierce Mates world. I’d never published a book on my own, and if this whole independent author thing didn’t work out, I was fully prepared to walk away. But the Fierce Mates books started gathering a small, devoted audience. I needed to write more books. But I wasn’t going to be happy repeating the same stories over and over again, so I made the world bigger by introducing new groups and new supernatural creatures. Some shifters got new abilities—Matt in Ruthless Misfit can tell lies. Doug in Savage Penance can complete his shift from human to animal in half a second. Bryce in Ruthless Outlaw can walk through dreams.

This process has shown me the beauty of creativity, especially within the playground of the paranormal. As I develop a new series, Junkyard Shifters, I’m once again starting with the basics—shifters. And as the world expands, so do the possibilities.

Liza likes her heroes packing muscles and her heroines packing agency. She got her start in romance by sneak-reading her grandma's paperbacks. Now she’s a USA Today bestselling author and she spends her time writing about hot shifters with fierce hearts. You can find her upcoming release, Filthy Beast, by visiting https://books2read.com/filthy-beast.

Join Liza's mailing list and get Fierce Heartbreaker for free, as well as an exclusive Sierra Pride prequel story and more fun bonuses! Check out Liza's Free Book page to get started: https://lizastreetauthor.com/free-book.

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Plagueborn

by Mitchell Luthi 

Stories featuring plague are no rare thing in the world of fantasy and fiction. There’s something deeply fascinating about the setting that has inspired writers for years. Even the word alone is enough to inspire a flicker of fear. Plague. That disease that rampaged through Europe, nearly wiping it out. But what about it has inspired writers and directors, video game producers, and graphic novelists to continue creating stories about it? Is it the sheer apocalyptic nature of the event? Or is it, perhaps, the feeling that mankind’s true nature comes to the fore when confronted with such an end? 
In Plagueborne, a devastating plague is sweeping across a continent still recovering from revolution. The plague seems incurable, inescapable, but for the province of Rothenberg, which has remained untouched. Of course, as religious hysteria rises, and talk of witchcraft and fell beasts spread, the stakes get higher and higher. The story itself follows Katarina Lorenz, a noble of the city of Rothenberg; Tannhauser, a mercenary; Ezekiel Smith, a Prelator of The Order; and Gelt Brunner, a former knight of the now dethroned king.

Following Katarina across Greater Virren as she tries to discover the cause of the plague has allowed me to delve into some interesting themes, and answer some questions I’ve always wanted to take the time to consider. One of these questions is one that Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek often poses: “… but what happens after the revolution?” It is a question spurred on by the fact that, often, the story we are told is how the revolution came about, and how the ruling elite or tyrannical government was overthrown. But do things actually get better after the revolution? How does society shift and change once the revolutionaries have control? How are those who advocated against revolution treated? Perhaps things actually get worse, and if so, how do the people react? Exploring these questions has always appealed to me, and I think they make for compelling themes in any work of fiction.
 In Plagueborne, the reader is plunged into a world still coming to terms with its own revolutionary past. The monarchy is gone. The king is dead, his empire dissolved, and independent city-states now cover the continent of Greater Virren. Much of how the continent has been shaped, in terms of political and religious ideology, is intrinsically linked to the role the monarchy played in the years prior to revolution. Indeed, the revolution itself—a deeply political act—was triggered by the execution of Bartolomeu Kezia, a religious figure. The resulting conflict saw both religious and political tensions boil over, which left a power vacuum once the war was over—a vacuum that The Order was only too happy to fill. 

Followers of Kezia and worshippers of The Twins, members of The Order reject any and all beliefs contrary to their own. It was for this reason that they, as well as the Brother and the Sister, were outlawed under King Behan’s rule. It was for this reason that Kezia was executed. Now, in the aftermath of revolution, The Order has become the dominant religious faction on the continent, with only the barbaric “painted men” of Vorgar left to their pantheon of gods. This flip from polytheism to monotheism is interesting to me, as it is one that has played out in our own history. The rise of Christianity and Islam both involved a similar shift—either brought about through the state, or as a cultural phenomenon. Examining that period of time, the precise moment when such a shift occurred, is fascinating for myself, and I hope for my readers, too. 

A more recently devised character, who features in the later novels, explores what this really means in a most interesting way. Gelt Brunner rejects the Faith and The Twins, preferring the worship of the old gods. But for him to even admit this fact could see him shunned, or even killed. How is that people, many of whom would have believed the same thing a few years ago, would now see someone killed for expressing that same belief?

There’s another idea that I’ve always found quite intriguing, but you’ll have to forgive the fact that it was inspired by a re-watching of The Mummy (1999). In the film, we are presented with Christian, Islamic, and “pagan” characters. As events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that the pagan characters’ beliefs are the only ones with any real power in the film. This is illustrated a number of times throughout The Mummy, from the awakening of Imhotep and his seemingly immortal nature, to the coming of the ten plagues and the power of the Book of the Dead (both to awaken him, and to have his soul spirited away, making him mortal once more at the end of the film.) The main characters in the film, Rick and Evelyn O’Connell, take all of this in their stride, despite the fact that it may very well mean that all they believe in is wrong—that the ancient Egyptian beliefs are valid to the exclusion of all others. But what happens when you are presented with the diametric opposite of your own faith? The result may vary between individuals. Some may double down on their own belief, and claim the devil is at work, while others may find themselves completely lost. This idea is never fully explored in the film, but it certainly inspired my approach to Plagueborne and plays an important role in the development of Ezekiel and Gelt.

If you like gritty, dark fantasy, then be sure to check out the first in the Plagueborne trilogy: The Ritual. It’s more of a novella than a novel, but it serves as an introduction to Greater Virren before the story really kicks off in The Zealot!

Mitchell Luthi is the author of The Ritual and The Zealot, the first two books in the Plagueborne trilogy, as well as The Black Hussars, a Plagueborne prequel novella. He has written short stories for the Write Like Hell anthology series.You can find his work on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. He is currently working on the final instalment in the trilogy, with The Heretic set for release by the end of the first quarter of 2020.

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