Guest Blog and Giveaway with Tate Hallaway

HEA and Iron Man

Last weekend I went to go see “Iron Man 2” with a friend. I’m a long-time Marvel fan, having devoured much of my cousin’s collection (actually begun by his father in the 60s) since I was old enough to read. Comics are epic. Not just cool, which they most defiantly are, but also in the original meaning of the word: long, sprawling stories that span generations.

Extrapolating from Marvel’s well-publicized bankruptcy, I have to imagine it’s difficult to get readers to commit to a long-term relationship. As a long-time reader, I’m irritated by what I see as gimmicks to mix things up, re-booting and re-telling origin stories for favorite iconic characters.

But Americans seem to crave the shiny. We like even our detergents to be “new and improved.” Not one of us would probably pick up a can of beans labeled, “old and stable.” It should be no surprise, then, that we also like our romances to be first blush. Who doesn’t enjoy the heady rush of discovering someone new and falling head over heels in love? The entire chick flick/romantic comedy movie industry is built on the idea that Americans will pay a lot of money, over and over again, for the same kind of new.

I committed a cardinal sin against the shiny in my series. I married my heroine and my hero. Foolishly, I didn’t see that as “the end.” As someone who has been in a relationship (not just with my comic books, either!) for the last twenty-four years, I knew for a fact that the fun BEGINS after “I do.” But, to most readers since the time of Shakespeare, a wedding signals HEA, the happily ever after, that no one actually experiences – it just goes soft-focus and misty and then the credits roll.

I’d kind of hoped to try out a grand experiment, not unlike the one Marvel is attempting on the big screen. I wanted to see if readers would follow along *after*-HEA. Could I continue to tell a romance after the wedding? After the honeymoon was officially over?

I’ll never know.

Many of my readers (“the numbers” to the bean-counting part of the publishing industry) didn’t even make it to the wedding, much less the honeymoon. Perhaps I didn’t tell the right story in the right way or at the right time, but, regardless, I’ll be watching Marvel with interest. Can Iron Man really launch the Avengers Initiative? Will the movie-going audience actually hang out for a longer story? Will we still be interested in Iron Man after we’ve seen him three or four times? After a while the suit is going to lose its ability to impress us with its steampunkish whirs and gears and we’ll be left with just plain, old Tony Stark, like that morning after when you realize that handsome knight on a white steed is just some schlub you agreed to be with for the rest of your life….

Or at least until you can trade him in for the new and improved version.

Would you like to win a copy of

Honeymoon of the Dead

by Tate Hallaway?

One commenter will win a copy of Honeymoon of the Dead

be sure to include email address

Open to US Shipping

Contest Closes Tuesday May 25 Midnight EST

Winners Announced on Wednesday May 26

+5 entries for being a Fang-tastic Books Follower

+5 entries for blogging about this contest

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+5 for being a @RoxanneRhoads twitter follower