Then Comes the Baby... (Children in Romance!) by Elva Birch

 

"A DAY CARE FOR SHIFTERS" SERIES by Elva Birch

There is a certain logical order to romance and children, as outlined in the famous schoolyard rhyme: First comes love, then comes marriage, then (usually in a convenient epilogue) comes the baby in the baby carriage. 

Nothing will squash the romance of a candlelight dinner faster than a fit or spaghetti in the hair, and finding a sitter is always an extra expense and complication!

The “Nope” Moment

 Romance books wouldn’t be very interesting if the meet-cute went straight to the happy ending. In nearly every book, there is something that keeps our heroes from getting right together - their families hate each other, they’re from opposite sides of the tracks, there are professional hurdles, one of them is trying to kill the other… and sometimes, there are little kids gumming up the works.

 Kids can be a wonderful plot complication. It’s hard enough to be a single parent and manage a career. Adding a dating life to that? Older kids can be left unattended, but they’ll have strong opinions about their parent getting romantically involved with someone, and younger kids absorb every available moment! The trials of juggling all of that can be perfect plot material.

 Add to that the wrinkle of paranormal offspring and magical secrets, and you’ve got plenty of challenges. In Dragon’s Instinct, Ian is a writer and stay-at-home dad, and getting work done is hard enough with a squirrel-shifting toddler who can hide anywhere…but when she starts bursting into flame, the twos get even more terrible. Ask any new mother how easy it is to take an uninterrupted shower or eat a full meal - and now add supernatural complexity for extra fun. What’s more powerful? Fate or a four-year-old?

Children as “Plot Moppets”

Kids don’t have to only keep our heroes apart, though! If the many versions of The Parent Trap have taught us anything, it’s that kids will often take matters into their own hands if they have strong feelings about the romantic lives of their parents. They may not understand the gritty (or spicy!) details of romance, but they want their mom or dad to be happy, and they’ll try to manipulate circumstances to make that happen. (Often with hilarious results!)

 Protective instincts

A book with kids doesn’t need a bad guy to provide plot (rugrats are perfectly capable of supplying ample drama!), but threatening children can add a level of danger and peril to a book that hits at a gut level.

 A possessive ex who wants custody? Someone willing to ransom children for leverage? All of a sudden, you’ve escalated the danger far more than you could with simple threats of personal danger.

There’s also nothing quite as sexy as a gruff bachelor who is soft for a little kid. I guarantee you that a big burly guy having a high tea with a circle of plushies and a princess will melt any panties.

The Things Kids Say

Not only are kids awesome plot pieces, they are also filter-free and perfectly happy to say the things that everyone in the room might be thinking. Between their innocent honesty and adorable misunderstandings, they can provide a comic relief unequaled by any other story element.

Agents of Chaos

In real life, babies are hard. Anyone who says otherwise has only read about them in romance books where they are always sweetly-behaved and never have dirty diapers. But kids are dealing with big feelings and new things at every turn. They are often awful and messy and destructive and heart-breaking…at the very same time they are wonderful and beautiful and creative and awe-inspiring. It’s a balancing act to truthfully portray the hard parts of being a parent without destroying the escapism of a satisfying romance book. Make it too easy and you don’t honor the honest work of parenting. Make it too realistic, and it’s no fun to read.

Children are unpredictable and universal. If you need to escalate a plot, they can get into terrific trouble just by wandering away after butterflies. While readers expect a certain amount of sense from their lead characters, the sheer randomness of children and the unexpected things they can say and do lend well to spicing up an adventure, and they can be heart-wrenching and honest. Done well, they add a satisfying layer to a new relationship, and provide an instant found family.

Kids don’t have to be reserved for the happy-ever-after epilogues!

Can you suggest romance books that have handled children as characters particularly well? I’d love to know!

Elva Birch writes a lot of adorable children in paranormal romance and has a book out this week called First Comes Love. A single mom is caught by surprise when her son turns into a penguin and a polar bear shifter comes to her rescue! This collection includes hilarious baby penguin sketches and is from the world of A DAY CARE FOR SHIFTERS.

SHIFTING IS IN THE BLOOD by Terry Spear

 One winning person who leaves a comment (include email address) will win an audible book and another winner, an ebook. Thanks so much for dropping by on this lovely Halloween!!!

Jaguar Pride Excerpt

   by Terry Spear

Stepping through snarled roots and wet and muddy leaf litter, Melissa's paws didn't make any sound as she moved through the towering tropical trees, her ears perked, listening for human voices.

Wearing his black jaguar coat, Huntley was sniffing the air nearby, pausing to listen. Darkness had claimed the area, the trees blocking any hint of light at dusk, not to mention the rainclouds moving in. Though Melissa's golden coat, covered in black rosettes, was difficult to see at night if anyone should shine a flashlight on her, Huntley was even harder to see, making him hauntingly ghost-like. In broad daylight, his rosettes could be seen, but in a darkly elegant way. She'd never tell him though. As hot as he looked, he probably well knew it, and she didn't want him to think she was interested, or anything. Not when they were both currently seeing someone else.

She loved working with him though.

Black jaguars, a melanistic form, averaged about six percent of the regular jaguar population. The jaguar shifters weren't sure about the ratio with their own kind. Huntley's mother was a beautiful black jaguar, and his dad, golden. Both his brother, Everett, and sister, Tammy, were golden also. For whatever reason, Huntley's coat appealed to Melissa, especially on missions like this. He seemed like a Ninja warrior in jaguar form, sleek, agile, and deadly. And she liked that he was wild, like she was, able to live in their native environments without a hitch. Unless they had trouble with poachers.

***

I was reading a “white warrior shifter” book once where there was no shifting. What??? Yep. They had sex, and talked about how she was a white warrior wolf, but never showed how she was, nor did she ever turn wolf. To qualify as a shifter book to me, the heroine or hero have to shift.

Earlier on, I had read this cool fantasy historical where she was at a lake, talking with the animals, and then a black panther is watching her. Later, we have a handsome dude who is panther-like in his movements, but nowhere did the story actually show him shifting or that he was truly a shifter or that the panther was a shifter. Maybe it wasn’t. But then why say the man moved like a black panther and was watching her at the lake like he was a hot panther shifter? Bad form. If someone is a shifter, show it. If not, don’t allude to it. I kept feeling like the author was afraid to show a shifter as if it might hurt sales, so she just alluded to it for coolness sake. But if there is to be a shifter, I want to know it—for real.

The first shifter story I ever read was when I was a kid and fell in love with the handsome prince who had been cursed by a wicked witch to be a polar bear during the day and a handsome man at night, East of the Moon and West of the Sun. It was the first time that I’d ever envisioned that someone that was a wild animal at some point in their life could be the same as a regal and kind and loving and handsome man. Yum.

I loved Ladyhawke where he was cursed to be a wolf and she a hawk and neither could be with each other in their human forms. Of course, it drove me crazy that they couldn’t be together, but I loved the beauty of the characters and their wilder halves.

I fell in love with Dracula when I was thirteen and saw him in a college play. He’s a shapeshifter too, you know. Some show vampires shifting into bats, others, wolves. And still others, all kinds of different things. But I also felt sorry for Dracula and Wolfman, and in both cases, I felt they deserved to be loved, just like anyone. And so when I wrote vampire stories, and shapeshifting stories to include wolves, jaguars, cougars, and next year, a polar bear shifter, I wanted to show that they were real people, based on real animals, needing real love. I also wanted to show that they were their own people, not despising what they are, but comfortable in their skin…or fur.

I love writing contemporary, but I’m also a huge fan of historical, so I’ll be working on a historical wolf story also.

What would you do if the sexier than life prince that you fell in love with was cursed as a polar bear during the day and you only had him at night to have and to hold?

TERRY SPEAR

About the Author

Bestselling and award-winning author Terry Spear has written over fifty paranormal romance novels and four medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered high praise and hit the USA Today bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in Crawford, Texas, where she is working on her next werewolf romance, continuing her new series about shapeshifting jaguars, and cougars, having fun with her young adult novels, and playing with her two Havanese puppies, Max and Tanner. For more information, please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/terry.spear. And on Wordpress at:

Terry Spear's Shifters

http://terryspear.wordpress.com/

ALPHAS UNWRAPPED

SHIFTERS! by Cathryn Cade

I wish I could recall the first shifter romance I read. The idea, if not the story, left an indelible impression on me—all the lethal power and grace of a big predator, rolled into one being with a sexy man. I’ve since read and enjoyed many more.

I believe shifter romance is so popular because so much of our real lives are out of our control.

Partners hurt us, ignore us and leave us. They don’t want the children we crave, or refuse to accept their responsibility for assisting in their creation. They decide another, younger woman is more attractive.

Or they love us to pieces, but things happen that they can’t protect us from, even if they wanted to. The world is a frightening place, and we live it waiting for the next crisis to happen. Part of being human, of being a woman, is being a caregiver … and hoping we receive at least a little in return.

And real men aren’t perfect. Love my manly man so much, but he reads hunting magazines and watches football instead of binging on Netflix seasons with me … and he thinks I have too many shoes. I know, right? There is no such thing.

But if an alpha predator fixes on us—come to Papa! Suddenly we are a mate, desired above all other women with a force that borders on obsession. To protect us, he’ll take on multiple other scary beings, and kill if he must. He’ll provide his lair as our new home, surround us with his wealth, and of course desperately want the children we produce. He’ll go alpha-bossy on us, but only so he can give us what we really want and need. And yes, he hunts, but he doesn’t read magazines about it and leave them all over our cute living room.

Nice, if a girl can get it.

Which is why I love to read shifter romance, and why I began writing them.

I also love Halloween—you should see my collection of old-fashioned Halloween decor. So when I decided to write the Halloween romance that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, the hero is … what else? A shifter!

However, he’s not the big, apex predator kind of cat. He doesn’t need to be, not when he can zap opponents with a spell whenever he chooses. He’s a wizard—and since a big cat can’t be running around modern day Sunnyvale, Oregon, his alius magickus is a black tom cat.

Yes, here I delved into another facet of shifter-ness. We all cuddle up with our pets for comfort, reassurance and love. And we talk to them, at least I do. My golden retriever has heard many a tale of woe and aggravation.

Soooo … what if, when you confide in your newly adopted cat that you have a huge crush on your new neighbor, you’re actually talking to the sexy wizard himself? And how embarrassing will it be later, when you realize exactly what secret wishes you poured into his furry ears? Oops.

Touch Not the Cat; a Sexy Halloween Romance by Cathryn Cade.

It will take a Halloween intervention of the furriest kind to get this unlikely pair together.

Egan Warburton can have any woman he wants—so of course this eligible wizard will choose a witch to share his new home. But why can’t he keep his eyes off his pretty neighbor? She’s too innocent for the likes of him … although she does love cats, especially Warlock, his own alter-ego. In either form, he can’t seem to resist playing naughty tricks to get her attention.

Too bad she’s a mortal with no idea his magickal realm even exists.

Paige Turner is the first to admit she’s as vanilla as they come—youth librarian, good neighbor and kind to cats, even black ones. But in her dreams, she’s a femme fatale who’s not afraid to shake off her bonds of caution and go after what she really wants ... such as her mysterious new neighbor, who is suddenly starring in her most erotic fantasies.

Too bad he’s also the most obnoxious man she’s ever met.

Amazon.com http://amzn.to/1ZECXcJ

BN.com http://bit.ly/1hXdglK

Kobo.com  http://bit.ly/1OKJJdv

What’s your favorite shifter romance?

I love Cherise Sinclair’s Hour of the Lion & Winter of the Wolf, Rebecca Zanetti’s Consumed, Jennifer Ashley’s wonderful Shifters Unbound series.

How about a favorite Halloween read? If you need some delish new romance that’s spooky around the edges, join me in The Romance Zone @ Night Owl Reviews FREE Online Magazine.

Cathryn Cade

… red hot romance

Amazon best-selling author of sci fi romance & contemporary too

RT 4.5 Stars and Night Owl Reviews TOP PICK

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