Shifters on the Moon

It’s such a thrill and an honor to have my words going to the moon. At first, I admit I was tickled by the idea of sending sexy paranormal shapeshifter romance (sometimes affectionately referred to as “shifter smut”) to the moon. Especially wolf shifter stories—because what’s more fun than looking up at the full moon and knowing my werewolves are up there, howling at the earth?)

But as I contemplated which books to send, my mind turned down a more serious path. The Writers on the Moon project is happening at a time when our country—and our world—need all the love and hope they can get.

In the nearly five years since I started writing and publishing shifter romance, I’ve thought a lot about what my genre offers our readers and our society.

Romance novels offer entertainment, escape, happy endings—all things that are easy to dismiss as trivial. But from the reader feedback I get about my books, I know they can make a huge difference to someone who is homebound, depressed, overwhelmed, stressed, or hopeless.

Romance is also primarily written by women, for women. It’s a unique opportunity to explore and prioritize women’s values, women’s voices, women’s perspectives, women’s needs, women’s longings, women’s fantasies, and women’s sexuality. It reflects what women would like their relationships and emotional connections to be like, and why. In a society struggling with gender roles and tensions, this is important work.

Shifter romance also offers magic. Fated mates. A loving bond between two people involving total devotion and acceptance—which is what so many of us yearn for.

But gradually I realized that my shifter romances were about more than love between a couple: I wrote recurring themes of community and family—families of blood, and those created or “found.”

My shifter wolf packs and “crews” are most often “found families” or created families, helping, supporting and fighting for each other. In my books, the chosen bonds that tie them together are literally magic—often visible and tangible—and make them vastly more powerful together then they are alone.

From the beginning, my readers loved them. What I didn’t expect, though, was that my craziest, most dysfunctional characters would be my most popular and beloved. I like to think that’s because it gives people hope that no matter how messed-up or flawed they might be, they can find love and a place to belong.

That’s why I chose the books I did for this project: my most popular series, the Bad Blood Shifters. The characters in the original crew had all been captured by shifter traffickers and experimented on, and were helped to escape by the main characters in one of my earlier books. They start out angry and traumatized, banding together by necessity, and end up as a tight family group, each of them getting a mate to share their lives with in successive books. There’s love and humor and danger, and as the crew bonds together and finds their mates, there’s healing and triumph.

The sixth book I included was The Enforcers: Noah, which was published immediately prior to the Bad Blood Shifters. It’s not only the book that spins off the Bad Blood Crew; it’s possibly my favorite book of all the ones I’ve written. It also contains a scene between the hero and heroine that encapsulates what my shifter communities are all about.

The scene takes place after the shifters that will become the Bad Blood Crew saved my main characters’ lives, as well as the heroine’s young son, in the course of rescuing one of their own. The rescued shifter, Tristan, has gone rogue as a result of his previous trauma. His enraged wolf has taken him over, and his friends have to restrain him to keep him from harming himself or others. There’s a chance his human form will never re-emerge.

My female main character, Mina, has just learned about shifters (and that her four-year-old son Brock and Noah, the man she’s been dating, are both shifter wolves). She’s witnessing the rogue wolf’s rage:

Mina was still angry, still scared, still hurt and heartbroken. She wanted to believe Noah really cared, that he hadn’t lied to her, but she didn’t know if she could trust him.

She’d always been alone, and right now she felt more alone than ever.

“Well?” she said. “What did you want to show me?”

Noah gestured across the clearing at the “crazy shed” where the bear shifter, Tank, was still sitting across the doorway. “That,” he said. “Look over there and tell me what you see.”

She could barely see the white wolf beyond the huge bulk of the bear-man, as it paced up and down the back wall of the shed. But she could hear its wicked snarling.

Suddenly, the wolf launched himself at the bear-man, and Mina flinched at the impact. Tank caught the wolf in his huge arms, holding its jaws shut with one enormous hand, immobilizing its body with the other. The wolf’s claws raked down his torso, and Mina could see trails of blood seeping from a dozen fresh or half-healed wounds.

He threw the wolf down, and it scrambled back and started pacing again. The whole time, Tank was talking nonstop in a low, repetitive voice, like a crazy person.

She didn’t know what Noah wanted from her. All she could give him was honesty.

“I see blood and violence and danger,” she said. “I see a wolf that’s lost any humanity he ever had, and a crazy man who taunts an already frightened animal into attacking him over and over because he has some kind of need for physical punishment.”

She added in a low voice, “I see Brock’s future—my son’s future—and it terrifies me.”

She suddenly wanted Noah to turn and comfort her, to put his arms around her and somehow make her feel safe like he’d done before all this insanity happened.

But he didn’t. He just stood with his hands on the porch railing, staring at the bloodbath happening across the clearing. The wolf attacked again, drawing more blood, and the bear-man stopped him, still talking, and threw the wolf back across the shed. They were both moving more slowly now.

“Yeah,” Noah said, so quietly she had to move closer to hear him. “This is one reason why I didn’t tell you. Because you’re right, in a way. This world—my world—is way more violent and primal than you’re used to. It’s hard sometimes, and dangerous, and maybe not a place for people who don’t have canines and claws and shifter healing.”

He sighed. “I wanted us to have more time. So you could get to know me, maybe get to care for me before I had to show you all this. But there’s another reason I didn’t tell you. Because you know what I see when I look over there?”

She shook her head. She didn’t, but she suddenly wanted to. She wanted to know what was inside Noah Reilly, and how he saw the world.

“I see what happens to shifters when the wrong humans find out what they are. Those two over there aren’t doing that because that’s what shifters do. Every shifter in this crew has been broken by humans. Captured. Tortured. Their friends and family have been slaughtered, or sold to rich ‘collectors,’ or to labs or sex traffickers.”

Mina couldn’t help a tiny gasp. “That’s horrible,” she whispered.

“We keep ourselves secret for a reason,” he said. “The number one rule for shifters—the fucking prime directive—is not to ever let human society know we exist. And yeah, sometimes our leaders do some pretty extreme things to keep the word from getting out. But when I look at that—” he nodded toward the shed, “—and when I think of what could happen to Brock if he falls into the wrong hands, I can see why our Council does whatever they have to, to try to keep us safe.”

He sighed. “And obviously, even that isn’t always enough.”

Mina felt sick to her stomach.

“That’s not why I brought you out here, though,” he said. “You want to know what else I see when I look over there?”

Mina nodded.

“I see brotherhood, and loyalty, and courage,” he said. “I see a wolf who’s here, messed up but safe, because another man carried his unconscious body on his back for ten fucking miles. I see a bear shifter who’s broken inside and who has every reason to hate the world, but he still took two bullets tonight for people he didn’t even know. Then he came back here and instead of going to bed where he belongs, he decided to stay up all night in the cold so his best friend wouldn’t have to be alone with his terror and misery.”

Tears began to stream down Mina’s face.

Noah went on, “I know you can’t hear what he’s saying from here, but I can. He’s not taunting Tristan. He’s telling him about all the things they’ve done together, little stupid day to day shit, trying to remind him he’s human so he can find his way back. If Tank were in bear form, he wouldn’t be getting so bloodied up, but he stays human so Tristan can hear his voice.”

Mina took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. It looked so…scary.”

Noah turned to face her. “I’m not blaming you for not understanding,” he said. “I just want you to see there’s a lot of good in our world. Shifters aren’t perfect, but we love our friends and families just like humans, and we want to protect them and see them safe and happy.”

By the end of the book, the Bad Blood Crew risk their lives for their friends once more—and save the day—and Noah and Mina find deep, true, lasting love. And because it’s a romance, I got to punish the bad guys, reward the good guys, and give my characters hope for a happier future. Maybe that’s not the world we have, but it’s the world we need to create.

So those are my choices for my own work, but we had a generous amount of digital space and my books didn’t take up my full allotment, so I invited some other writers to share it. I cautioned them that they probably wouldn’t be able to get their names on the project, so I was excited to be able to list them and their work here. Also included are:

Sara Backer, novelist and poet (selected poems from her book Such Luck)

Tamara Boyens, novelist (Under Dark Sky Law)

Rebecca Cherba, novelist (excerpts from Walking Shadows)

Signe Jorgenson, essayist (essays “What We Do Here” and “As I Am, You Too Shall Be”)

Kaerra, fiction author (short story “Our Place Among the Stars”)

Nikki McLendon, poet (poems “Elegy” and “Spring Requiem”)

Lauren Sweet, novelist, (fairy-tale retelling Bitter Snow, vols 1-3)

Morelle Sweet, poet (selected poems)

Erin Wilcox, fiction author (short story “The Barn”)