You know, I always had a feeling that growing up between eight boys and having a mother with a very offbeat sense of humor who loved all things horror might come in handy. As a result, I have never really enjoyed anything classified as "normal." I cut my teeth on horror films and comic books and sank my nose into so many science-fiction movies that if I hadn't grown up to love paranormal fiction, something would've been painfully wrong.

Paranormal fiction, to me, is so popular because it doesn't limit the imagination and gives the reader an extraordinary passage with the turn of a page. Within this realm, readers expect the unexpected. In fact, they relish it just as I relished the horror and science fiction my mother watched and read with me.

I understand why readers can't get enough of this genre with characters who defy death and conquer beasts and whatever else might stand in the way of their happy ending. What's not to love? They party all night, sleep all day, and aren't subject to the laws of humans. These characters are the baddest of the bad and the coolest of the cool. There's not much they can't do and won't do if someone gets in their way, but there's always an Achilles heel with every supernatural being—what will theirs be? That's part of the allure of these characters. What makes and breaks them appeals to the reader.

And I can tell you, as a writer, nothing pleases me more than to learn a character has hidden powers or to have a demon pop out of the sky to wreak all sorts of havoc on the hero. As a reader, it's a paralleled emotion.

But it's when these characters have human emotions that we truly connect with them and care about their story. What makes them like us? What makes us care so much about a vampire that can't find love? Or a werewolf that will fight to the death for a mate?

It's those human and animalistic qualities, the threat of life and death and the pull of a world that doesn't exist in reality. Most of us live in a world that's safe and normal. In a paranormal world anything is possible.

Copyright © 2008 by Sherrilyn Kenyon. All rights reserved.