Lights, camera, haunted house! Step into author Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s newest novel, Grim Root, and see how she played matchmaker for two genres that are truly meant to be together: horror and romance.
BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM:
Romance Is Horror
In Grim Root, horror meets romance meets reality TV when a group of women on the TV show The Groom must fight for the heart of a corn-fed bachelor by spending a week in a haunted house. As the true nature of the house comes to light, two of the trapped women fall for one another, while a third resolves to do everything in her power to win.
Because of the reality TV dating show element, I made romance a focus of this novel, with a twist: the most relatable romance is between two of the women contestants. Once the romance element came to mind, the rest of the plot fell into place around it. Horror and Romance are, after all, a perfect pairing.
For the last three and a half years, I’ve been earning a salary writing romance for a mobile game. Day to day, I live and breathe romance tropes: enemies to lovers, ice kings, surprise close proximities. Before I started my job, I’d written romance into my SFF stories, but I wasn’t immersed in the genre. I didn’t realize that romance and horror are a match made in heaven, with more in common than people think...
Grim Root: Amazon|Barnes & Noble
Source: The Big Idea: Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam | Whatever
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