Way back when Enlightened was just a crazy idea, and we hadn’t even typed our first word, Sair insisted – quite fervently that the story was an Urban Fantasy/Fantasy Fiction/Science Fiction/horror/Paranormal suspense. She was happy for it to sit under any of these genres however, under no circumstances, was Enlightened ever to be described as a Paranormal Romance. Jen has spent the last several years trying to convince her otherwise – Jen is crap at convincing people of anything.
Recently Sair helped out behind the scenes at the Cairns
Tropical Writers festival where - thank Daska – she had the opportunity to meet
the award winning Romance Author, Anna Campbell.
The timing of this meeting was fortuitous as the girls had
been debating the genre of their series, given the impending release of number
two. Jen argued that they had given Urban Fantasy/Fantasy Fiction/Science
Fiction/horror/paranormal suspense a good run and it was time to open the story
up to a new audience. Sair – being the horror buff that she is, stumbled over
the R word and argued that putting the books under the Romance genre was
limiting their audience.
This dilemma was foremost in Sair’s mind when she had the
opportunity to steal five minutes of Anna Campbell’s time, so she posed the
question to Anna. After Sair gave her a brief explanation of the story, Anna
had Sair confess that the story was in fact a Paranormal Romance, hence the only
place for the Enlightened series was the Paranormal Romance genre and we
shouldn’t confuse people by putting it elsewhere. It is what it is and we need
to embrace it. The clouds then parted and angel song was heard (slight
exaggeration). Anna had managed to do in five minutes what Jen had failed to
do in over five years. Enlightened finally became a Paranormal Romance!
Anna Campbell… Jen totally owes you a glass of something
bubbly.
