Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Zombies, in romance?

Romance readers never fail to surprise me. I’m still bewildered about the popularity of male/male romances, not made popular by gay readers, but by heterosexual female readers. And now zombies are popular in romances. I can’t get the disgusting image of a brain eating, groaning, slobbering zombie out of my mind. This is not the ideal hero or heroine of a romance novel—at least in my opinion.
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Can you imagine anyone kissing or having sex with a zombie? Eew. At least a vampire or a werewolf can hold a conversation and look normal enough to be a romantic lead. Blood drinking vs. brain eating—I would pick blood drinking over brains any day. There is too much of an ick factor involved with zombies. This may be something that affects me personally because I was traumatized by watching the original Night of the Living Dead when I was a child. Nothing frightens or disgusts me more than a zombie. “Barbara, they’re coming for you.” I hear this dialog in my nightmares.
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I haven’t read any romances with zombies, but the only way for a zombie romance to work for me is if the hero and heroine are human and not zombies. Maybe zombies terrorize them or maybe they hunt zombies. But I don’t want to read about zombies having sex with other zombies or with anyone. Keep the zombies in horror novels and leave romance to the hunky vampires and werewolves.
Kelley Heckart
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2 comments:

E. Ayers said...

I so agree! In fact, I've had problems with some vampires and shape shifters. If they are going to shift, then please let them shift the entire way. And draining the "victim" of all blood (death) is not sexy, it's not cute, and it certainly isn't endearing.But I guess there will always be those who like to walk on the wild side or at least visit in a story.

My heroes are men, my heroines are women, no one is getting hung from the chandelier, and you aren't going to learn some new sexual position. Maybe that makes me boring to some people. But I think the vast majority of readers want the escape of a good book with heroes and heroines with whom they identify.
E.

Lila Barton said...

I write paranormal but stick to vampires, weres, witches and demons (of the sexy not the evil variety) but one of the ladies on my critter board wrote a terrific zombie romance. The hero and heroine are fighting zombies, not making out with them, and it's a very sweet post-apocalyptic story.

Lila