Um, excuse me miss, but perhaps you would see fit to let me dominate you? I mean, if that's okay...

Well, it's been a while. I sold another story. I have some more in the pipeline. I'm gearing up for a semi-big year, I guess. So I'm going to take this moment to angst. Because I just can't leave it alone. So I'm going to talk about Alpha heroes.

I have issues writing Alpha heroes, the main issue being: I can't.  I enjoy them in my fiction (though on a law of diminishing returns basis, meaning I overload quickly and then have to go away from romance for a while before I can read it again), but I find them so ridiculous in my own writing that they tend to be subverted in some way.  The last alpha male I wrote was an ice cold killer, totally ruthless, preternaturally beautiful, and insufferably arrogant with a tragic past.  Which, yeah, that's pretty attractive, I guess, but I couldn't relate to him just as that.  So I made him dumb as a box of rocks, too.  Not that many characters ever noticed, being so preoccupied with the beautiful and deadly aspects and fearing for their lives, but I loved how truly slow on the uptake he was.  It put a damper on his arrogance and made it comical instead of annoying, and I could relate that to myself.  He spent a lot of his time looking cool and menacing, but behind the facade he was terminally confused.  Like me.  I spend much of my time terminally confused as well, but since I can't decapitate someone with my bare hands, I have to cover it up in different ways.

I recently, however, decided to write a werewolf novella. I love my premise, but my hero... not an Alpha, which I gather is rare for erotic werewolf stories.  I mean.  Not even a little bit.  He's broken and neurotic and while he is totally hot he's just not an Alpha.  A Lambda, perhaps, and I find that far more fun to write about.  Give me a vulnerable, dithering man who develops into a man who will handle things because the heroine just can't do it all herself.  I don't like writing a story where he starts that way.  It just doesn't make much sense to me.

I also suspect I fail at Alphas because I don't have an Alpha bone in my body.  Sure, I'll take charge, but only if I must.  I mean, come on, who wants that kind of responsibility?  Not me, and not my heroes, apparently.  Ugh.  ~*Effort.*~  I suspect my inner college student has a lot to do with this.

Nevertheless, I need to make this novella sellable, so I swear upon my life that I will try to rectify this situation, because I like Alpha heroes.  I do!  Especially if they are secretly ridiculous.  Er.  Anyway, I'm going to read every single post in Kate Walker's blog labeled All About Alphas.  See, I'm putting it here so I don't forget!

...Ugh.  ~*Effort.*~