Fang Bangers

Table of Contents
Introduction by Lori Perkins
Forbidden Pleasure by Rebecca Leigh
The Creatures from Craig’s List by Jeremy Wagner
Shattered Resistance by Lucy Felthouse
Mate Run by Isabo Kelly
Girls’ Night Out by J. G. Faherty
The Best Man by Elizabeth Thorne
And Ye Shall Inherit the Fat of the Land by Jan Kozlowski
Cupid, Cuspid: What’s the Difference by Lois Gresh
Will Power by Cecilia Tan
Good Boyfriend by Gina McQueen
Fixation by Dana Fredsti
Red Devil Lounge by Melanie Thompson
Jan’s Punishment by Sascha Illyvich
Love Bites: A Survival Guide by Kilt Kilpatrick


Introduction
By Lori Perkins

It seems that everywhere you look everyone you know is talking about doing it with a vampire and/or werewolf lover. Team Edward or Jacob. Bill and Sookie. Makes you kind of feel like you’re missing something if your alpha male is just a plain old alpha man.
Not to worry. Fang Bangers brings you fourteen tales of love and lust redefined with every fanged and/or clawed creature imaginable—and some you probably never even thought of in quite that way before.
You may ask yourself, why are we, as an American culture, suddenly so in love with these supernatural creatures? Where did all this paranormal panting come from? The answer lies in the reflection (or lack thereof) we see of ourselves.
The paranormal part of the equation comes in the freedom to break the “rules” of traditional romance story telling (alpha male meets damsel/heroine, grave misunderstanding ensues to keep couple apart, but hero or heroine figures out how to fix the problem and they live happily ever after) and allows the heroine to also be an alpha, and perhaps, even kick his ass before saving it. When supernatural creatures are involved, all rules can be broken/inverted/suspended along with our disbelief. The only romance rule that continues to apply is the possibility of some sort of happily-ever-after or happy-for-now ending.
Both the vampire and werewolf mythos as interpreted in American popular culture continue to be flexible and work well in partnership with the romance alpha male format.
. The vampire and werewolf mythos is malleable, and can therefore be adapted to the zeitgeist of the times—in the late ’70s, the vampire mythos stood for the androgyny of glam and gender politics as seen in the homoerotic elements of Anne Rice’s novels. In the ’90s, we saw the emergence of the greedy blood-sucking vampires, which were a sign of those boom times. Buffy and Anita Blake were products of the change in gender roles of the times.
Today, we find the paranormal a fluid metaphor that allows for a lot of cross-pollination of supernatural creatures. As a result, we have seen an explosion of created universes where werewolves and vampires and zombies and ghosts and shapeshifters all inhabit the same sphere (and vie for the same female, be she human or even some hybrid). It’s a brave new paranormal world.
This reflects our global reality. In these first years of the twenty-first century, our vampires/werewolves and creatures of the night represent that new world we are forging with new alliances among nations we never imagined and new socio/racial/sexual global politics.
So, in these pages you will find traditional paranormal romances such as Elizabeth Thorne’s werewolf tale in “The Best Man” and Melanie Thompson’s historical vampire story in “Red Devil.” And you will find taboos—a vampire who lusts after a shapeshifter in “Forbidden Pleasures” by Rebecca Leigh, or a dominant/submissive relationship between a werewolf and a fairy in Sascha Illyvich’s “Jan’s Punishment,” and the touchingly lovely story of the last human and the last vampire in a world overtaken by zombies in Kilt Kilpatrick’s “Love Bites: A Survival Guide.” The possibilities are truly endless.
As long as writers figure out new ways to interpret the vampire/werewolf mythos, we will continue to be gifted with compellingly relevant paranormal fiction. I hope that’s what Fang Bangers brings to you.

Lori Perkins
July 9, 2010