Romancing My Stories: A Guest Post by Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

Over the last year, I’ve been reading and writing reviews of numerous novels (on my blog “Four Names of Professional Creativity” http://kevinpsbroden.blogspot.com/), and they’ve all been Paranormal Romance. This was all by chance, or so I thought. A year earlier reading a Romance genre in any form was the furthest thing from my mind. Yet, so far, I have enjoyed every one of them.

As a writer, I have done fantasy, science fiction, detective, and super hero fiction, but I would never see myself writing a Romance story. Then, about a month ago, a realization struck me:

The very first short story I wrote for my high school creative writing class would now be described as PARANORMAL ROMANCE.

Having read comic books for years (they helped with my learning to read and write), I had a certain goal in mind: to write and draw comics professionally. But with this story, I was going beyond scripting a story around a twenty-two-page comic.

The story begins on the eve of a wedding when the groom is killed and his ghost must seek to help his bride fall in love again so that he can move on.

The story must have been okay, because my instructor gave it a good grade and positively compared it to professional authors she had read.

 A few years later I would turn in a time travel story to a college class.

In this story man is accidentally transported back into the London Blitz of World War II and meets a beautiful woman, then returning to present day he falls in love with the woman’s granddaughter.

It too received a good grade.

I have not completely gotten away from my original dream of writing and drawing comic books, and have worked professionally in the industry as well as in animation. Currently I co-write and illustrate the online comic book “Flying Glory and the Hounds of Glory” (http://flying-glory.com) which is celebrating its 10^th anniversary. It’s a super hero tale about teenagers in a rock band, but as the story progressed it soon became more about those characters and their relationships than any super powered battles or reaching the top of the music charts.

In the comic we have a developing love triangle, as well as another character who can have anyone woman he wants with the flex of a muscle, but now finding true love and will fight to save it.

This comic is as much a romance story as it is a super hero tale, if not more so.

A few weeks ago I completed an online serialized pulp novel entitled: “Revenge of the Masked Ghost” (http://revengeofthemaskedghost.blogspot.com)

This story is about a masked vigilante and how his actions affect his family. What he does is for his lost love, and the repercussions of his death causes his brother-in-law to take up the mask for the love of his own wife.

What have I discovered looking back over my work is that no matter the genre, or the plot, there is some type of romance involved even if completely unintentional. I’ve also learned that not all romance comes as two people falling head over heals in love, or having sex. It’s more about relationships between characters growing closer as they experience the story and their lives together. It might be two partners in the police force who will become so close and love each other, as partners should, that they would die for one another. Though the romance of the heart always adds something to every story.

I am currently finishing and preparing a novel for publication entitled “Clockwork Genie” about a girl who inherits a genie after her grandfather, whom she never knew, is murdered. I had a basic idea of the plot I wanted to tell, but the story didn’t start working until the romance between characters grew into something much more. Though it is indeed a fantasy, plus a good part detective, it is over all a romance tale. In the novel three different couples find love because of the genie.

So I ask myself again, do I write Romance? Most certainly I do. Paranormal Romance? Yep, as well as Science Fiction Romance, Detective Romance, and Super Hero Romance.

I don’t think I could write any of them if there wasn’t romance in there somewhere.

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Kevin Paul Shaw Broden was once called “the kid with too many names” by a television

producer, but he prefers to be known for having “four names of professional creativity.”

A published author since his first science fiction story appeared in his college newspaper, he is the co-creator/co-writer and artist for the online comic book “Flying Glory and the Hounds of Glory” that is celebrating its 10th Anniversary and can be read at http://www.flying-glory.com.

“All my life I wanted to tell stories,” he said in an interview recently and continues to tell stories in one form or another whether it be in comic books as a writer or illustrator, in animation where his work has appeared internationally, or in prose.

His first professional comic book assignment provided backgrounds and color comps for early issues of SURPREME for Image Comics. In animation he co-wrote several episodes of the Japanese series “Midnight Horror School” which has aired throughout the world, and has yet to

appear on any U.S. networks. Kevin has also been hired to write and develop television series. His work as a writer and artist has appeared in two textbooks on animation “Gardner’s Guide to Writing and Producing Animation” and “Gardner’s Guide to Pitching and Selling Animation”

both by Shannon Muir.

Along with “Flying Glory and the Hounds of Glory”, Kevin writes an online pulp serial titled “Revenge of the Masked Ghost” http://revengeofthemaskedghost.blogspot.com/

Currently, he is completing his first paranormal romance novel.

Kevin has a weekly blog, which includes articles on writing, comic books, animation, and other subjects related to storytelling: http://kevinpsbroden.blogspot.com/