Rory ni Coileáin: An alternate fantasy

Another fabulous broad from Broad Universe, Rory ni Coileáin has survived both a creative writing degree and rejection by a Very Big Author. She has followed a writerly path, which may not be for everyone, but is certainly her own.    

                                          

It was forty years ago right about… oh, now… that I first picked up a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It originally caught my eye because I was tired of books I could devour in a single sitting (which was most books, and certainly anything that was considered “age-appropriate” for eleven), and Dune was a Very Fat Book. But that happy chance hurled me headlong into the realm of speculative fiction, where I have tarried long with Duane and Yolen and LeGuin and Brin and Cherryh and McCaffrey and Gaiman, and I’ve never looked back.

I have, however, looked sideways in a few interesting directions. After spending thirty years not using my creative writing degree (after a seriously scathing rejection letter from Marion Zimmer Bradley, whom I worshiped at the time and figured that if anyone was qualified to tell me I was a talentless hack who shouldn’t even be considering putting pen to paper, it was her), I am finally a published author of one urban fantasy series, and about to roll out a second. Urban fantasy erotic romance. Gay urban fantasy erotic romance. I’m a card-carrying member of both Broad Universe and the Romance Writers of America, and darned proud of both.

Because while the adult content of my books determines where they’re shelved, I consider myself very much a fantasy author. My first series, the "SoulShares", involves a completely realized Fae world, the Realm, and what happens when you mix Fae and humans. Oh, and there’s a supernatural villain that gives me shivers, and I wrote him. Her. It. Them. Whatever. I draw quite a bit on Irish legend and language for my Fae, but the legend is my own take, and the language is mutated phonetically (I’ve studied just enough linguistics, and enough Irish, to be dangerous).

Why romance? Because I’ve discovered that the stories I like to tell are the ones where two people meet and gradually figure out they can’t live without one another. Why erotic romance? Because I have no brakes and no filter. Seriously, I don’t do anything halfway, and when sex is something that would naturally happen in the story, I see no reason to back away from it, and every reason to make it really good. But I’ll tell you one thing – none of the adult content in any of my books is gratuitous or titillating. If it’s there, there’s a darn good plot-driven reason for it.

I may branch out, eventually. I had an idea hit me upside the head the other day for a Fae steampunk novel set on the first Fae/human interstellar starship. That’s going to have to wait a while, though – I think I have to mess with my timeline a bit, first. But in the meantime, I’m thrilled to finally be writing, in part, in the genre I’ve loved since I was a bookish, reclusive little girl with an enormous imagination.

More about Rory ni Coileáin

Rory is an editor of legal opinions by day, a chronicler of very naughty Fae by night, and the mother of a high school senior all the time, except in public. In her spare time – ha! – she sings in her church and Cathedral choirs, teaches Irish dancing, and caters to the whims of a dog who is three-quarters golden retriever, one quarter husky, and all hair – if she ever learns to spin, she’ll be able to knit herself a puppy a week – and a cat who is extraordinarily good at taking up the middle half of a queen-sized bed. 

More from Rory ni Coileáin

If you would like to learn more about the worlds of the SoulShares (Ravenous Romance) or the 
Gille Dubh (upcoming from Ellora’s Cave beginning December 2013), check out her Facebook page, her Amazon author page, or her blog which she is very bad about updating but she really means well and promises to try to get to it more often, cross her heart.