Guest Author: Elizabeth Black

What Are Your Favorite Paranormal Creatures
By Elizabeth Black




Halloween is my favorite season of the year. I have all my favorite decorations out such as my "Halloween" snow globe (from the movie), my "Scream" snow globe, my black cat on a pumpkin snow globe (okay so I like snow globes), my terra cotta pumpkins, candy corn candles, and haunted house tea light holder. Not to mention my Halloween towels and oven mitt. I buy this stuff every year the first week in November when all the Halloween stuff is 75% off. I found some real gems doing this.

So this brings me to what kinds of paranormals I think are going to be big over the next few years. Granted, the usual vamps, werewolves (and other shapeshifters) will always be popular but how about ghosts and zombies? Here's what I think of my favorite paranormal creatures:

Vampires – So Stephen King doesn't like Stephanie Meyers' sparkly vamps or the sexy vamps in the "True Blood" book series. Granted, he's a horror writer and he wants vamps to go back to being terrifying. I think he's both right and wrong. I like both horror and erotic romance and both have different kinds of vampires. You aren't likely to be sexually attracted to the vamp in "Salem's Lot" – and you're not supposed to be. I do not want to lip lock with Nosferatu! Disgusting! However, I find Eric in the "True Blood" books to be incredibly sexy in part because he's so repressed, just like the vamps tend to be in romance novels. All it takes is the right woman to open him right up and make him fall in love. I think vamps harken back to repressed Victorian sexuality and that theme remains very tantalizing these days. Yeah, they're walking corpses but sexy corpses, unlike the vamps you find in horror novels. Two different animals in my opinion. I grew up watching Hammer Films and I found Christopher Lee to be incredibly sexy (and deadly of course). I know some people think I'm out of my mind but that's how I felt. I was much more attracted to Peter Cushing but Lee had his sway over me. Just like Frank Langella did in the stage and movie versions of "Dracula". Plus the women are always sexy in Hammer Films. Those movies turned the guys on who enjoyed Yutte Stengaard, Ingrid Pitt, and Kate O'Mara.

Werewolves – I never found werewolves particularly sexy until I wrote "Feral Heat". I had to understand what the appeal was before I tackled sexy werewolves. Unlike vamps, werewolves are not the least bit repressed. They are the opposite extreme – much too animalistic. They can't keep their lusts under control, which makes them hot in the sack, eager to control, and eager to please. They're at their most popular when they are alpha males (same applies to vamps) who control and tend to women's lusts with their own out-of-control passions. I also wonder if some women find their vulnerability, especially when they shift from wolf to human, very attractive. These creatures need to be hidden and brought to safety before the village people find them and kill them. Since they cannot control their lycan natures they need a good woman to care for them. Hence more attraction.

Ghosts – Ghosts are my personal favorite. I have loved ghost stories and legends since I was a child. Nothing scares me more than a good ghost story like "The Haunting Of Hill House", "Hell House", "The Changeling", "The Ring", "Dark Water", and more of those Asian horror films with vengeful, angry female ghosts in them. Some of the most romantic films, plays, and books deal with ghosts as well. I'm thinking of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir", "Ghost", "Topper", and "Blithe Spirit". Ghosts symbolize the existence of life after death, which is very soothing to lots of people. Plus you get to continue to live in your own home for eternity dressed in your nicest clothes.

Zombies – These creatures have always been popular in horror but they have recently found a following in erotic romance. To me they represent the loss of humanity. Early zombie films like "White Zombie" starring Bela Lugosi did not have undead zombies. The zombies in that movie were living people so beaten down and demoralized as slaves that they had their humanity beaten out of them. The hero had to lure his zombified wife back to humanity through his love. Zombies can be a hard sell because they are so gross, being dead and decaying, body parts falling off all over the place, and being just generally nasty. I've read some zombie romance fiction and the romance tends to be between living characters dealing with the undead. I did read some sex scenes between zombies or humans and zombies and it's rather unsettling to say the least.

Those are my favorite paranormal creatures. What are yours? What do you think of creatures I didn't mention like fairies, angels, demons, and other types of shifters? And what about creatures that are from non-western folklore? I've written a few stories with those creatures and they're always unusual and fun to write.

Since I mentioned "Feral Heat", here is information to buy it if you're interested. This one is a werewolf erotic romance. I shall soon start working on the sequel, "Lover's Moon".



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