This was a huge week for us at Ink Monster with the launch of our newest collaborative series, The Shadow Ravens. If you’ve been reading our work so far, I’m guessing you’ve noticed our company’s penchant for the paranormal, from witches to werewolves and angels to demons, with a whole lot of magic and mythology in between. All of us are speculative fiction nuts. Don’t get us wrong—we love reading a good contemporary romance or even picking up some fascinating nonfiction, but when it comes to writing, we fall firmly under the “speculative” umbrella.
If we have to pick a genre, the books in our Alpha Girls world should be shelved somewhere in the paranormal/teen romance category. This genre is both well-established and well-loved. We’re going to keep writing in it until you tell us to stop, but we also like to play in other sandboxes.
The Shadow Ravens is our first step outside the paranormal mold. We really debated what genre to call the series—Cipher has elements of dystopia, Sci-Fi, and romance, but doesn’t quite fall into either category. Advertising it as a dystopia isn’t exactly right (it’s nothing like your Roth/Collins/Condie pillars of the genre) and our writing styles certainly aren’t hard science fiction. If you come into this series looking for tech specs and the nuts and bolts of genetics, you will be disappointed. So while Cipher and the upcoming stories take place in a high-tech world, we’re more interested in exploring love and relationships than drowning you in tech jargon.
A little SF + a lotta romance = futuristic romance
If we have to pick a genre for the Shadow Ravens, we’re going with “futuristic romance.”
What does that mean to you? Well if you enjoy gaming, kick-assery, food packets, double-agents, tattoos, dyed hair, superpowers, kissing, and/or electrified strolls on the beach, Cipher should be right up your alley.
And if you love Cipher, you’ll love Quanta when you meet her in October 2015 : ) Hop on over to my Pinterest board for a sneak peek into her head.