Mallory Marlowe is an author and video game writer living in Los Angeles, California. Seriously right-brained since childhood, her love of telling stories began with highly elaborate plots for her Barbie dolls and taking elementary school writing projects too seriously. She studied Writing for Film and TV at Emerson College. When she isn’t writing, she’s likely reading, stuck in LA traffic, or has fallen down a weird internet rabbit hole.
The paranormal and falling in love are both things that sometimes we can’t really explain. They both come with anxious anticipation, tingly feelings out of nowhere, and a looming question of “what if?”. As a lover of all things spooky, It was no shock to me that I found a happy niche within the paranormal romance sphere, including all things from cryptids, to ghosts, and now aliens, in my upcoming release Love at First Sighting.
Here are some pillars I swear by when crafting my paranormal romances:
What are you really saying?
Whether I intend to or not, I often find that the paranormal elements of my books are metaphors for a larger lesson the character needs to learn. In my debut, Love and Other Conspiracies, our protagonist Hallie doesn’t believe in much, including herself, which makes her teaming up with steadfast believer, Hayden, all the stranger. However, in their search for cryptids, ghosts, and the truth, she rediscovers a belief in herself and her value. Love at First Sighting deals heavily with facades and covering up the truth, and while El and Carter are uncovering an alien mystery, they’re also uncovering parts of themselves that need solving and growing.
Figuring this out honestly makes so many things fall into place for me. It functions like a thesis statement, and a lens for the character’s journey rather than just being paranormal.
Know Your Elements
Knowing your world and how it works is essential. It’s a safety net from plot holes and pitfalls in your lore. It isn’t always just knowing how your vampires survive or how ghost logic works, but knowing exactly what world your characters are living in. Is the paranormal a well-known thing? Is it a secret that they must uncover? Exactly how weird is the world? It also helps to know if the paranormal is a total hinderance to your protagonist’s life, or an asset to help them! This also helps me figure out the tone of the book, whether it’ll lean spookier or cozier, as well as exactly how much worldbuilding I’ll need to do.
With Love at First Sighting, I knew that I wanted this story to remain small, otherwise, it’d become a much different story and become far less about the characters and their romance. So I built the otherworldly elements around the growth arcs of the characters, and for everyone else in the world, life is pretty normal. These two are just uniquely swept up in this world of the unexplained.
The Promise of the Premise
Writing in a cross-genre space means delivering on the expectations of those genres. A true romance must have a happily ever after. In a mystery, you typically expect some kind of hunt for clues and to catch the culprit in the end. When writing a paranormal story, I find one of the most effective ways to land the story is to lean in and commit to the bit fully. You’ve already infused magic and the unexpected into this world, so don’t be afraid to take your paranormal love story all the way and honor those genre conventions.
When writing Love at First Sighting, I knew there had to be an action adventure/mystery element to it. As it started to take shape in my head, it looked like a noir mystery with one foot in the past and one firmly in the present. Delivering on both a fully fleshed out romance and an engaging, complete mystery was certainly a challenge, but one that I’m incredibly proud of and had a blast creating.
I adore writing paranormal romance and love the opportunities for magic and the unknown to weave with a tender love story. In my opinion, the strongest paranormal romances are the ones that have something bigger to say and honor the conventions of the genre. It’s been thrilling to see the rise of this eccentric sub-genre of romance, and I cannot wait to see what creative directions it takes into the future!
Love at First Sighting by Mallory Marlowe
Influencer El Martin is searching for a thrill that feels real, but she could have never expected that thrill to come from recording a mysterious flying object. Private Intelligence Sector Agent Carter Brody is dedicated to keeping the case quiet, but he is struck by El’s fiery personality and the unexplainable similarity between El’s footage and a family tragedy. As they delve deeper into the mystery, one thing becomes clear: their chemistry is out of this world, threatening to overtake their original mission.
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