Alternative Hero Material

It's my crazy great pleasure to have Lynne Marshall at Tattered Pages today, with a fabulous post about alternative heroes. I CAN'T WAIT to see comments on this one~ And be sure to leave one, cuz Lynne is hosting a give-away!

As romance readers, we’ve gotten used to reading about heroes who light up the room when they enter. They’re gorgeous and little birdies go tweet tweet tweet around their heads whenever they smile. Without spending any time at the gym, and while eating anything they want, they still manage to be cut and wash-boarded. Did I mention they are moguls, top-notch surgeons, millionaires and/or undercover cops, and even though every woman on earth drools over them, they only have eyes for the heroine?

Ah, the power of romantic fiction. Sigh.

What about regular guys? Aren’t they worthy of our undying love, too? 

Inspired by reading AJ Nuest’s book, Jezebel’s Wish, where the heroine, Jezzy—what I call an alternative heroine—is far from the norm in the perfect looking, today-girl, I-can-have-it-all-type departments, I got an idea for this blog. So here’s my plan, I’d like to talk a little about alternative heroes, the not-so-perfect men who still manage to win over our hearts in our favorite books. 

Anyone ever read Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer? Will Parker was skinny, homeless, and out of work at the tail end of the great depression when he stumbles into Eleanor Dinsmore’s life by answering her ad for a husband. She thinks Will is a bag of bones and as the story plays out, she helps fatten him up, and turn him into the man he is destined to be. Did I mention she is a widow, pregnant, and has two other children, and is in great need of a man to help her work her land?

That scenario doesn’t sound very sexy does it? Well, I’m here to tell you that book will grab you by the collar and pull you into its depth faster than any Stetson clad Texas billionaire.

Suz Brockman wrote a guy named Ken “Wildcard” Karmody who was only five-feet-eight, in Out of Control, one of her Navy Seal Series. Not your average hero material, you suggest? Let’s just say you’d be wrong about that statement, too.

Recently, I read a fun book called Wanna Get Lucky? by Deborah Coonts, where the hero turns out to be a cross dressing nightclub entertainer in Vegas. This was a harder stretch for me because I kept imagining him with waxed eyebrows whenever he and the heroine got up close and personal.

I’ve got one more alternative hero I’d like to tell you about. His name is Tyler White, and he is an over forty, has-been singer on his comeback tour in One for the Road, my current release with The Wild Rose Press. He’s big, six-feet-four, a bit out of shape, he smokes, and has blood pressure issues. Is that your idea of a hero? Probably not. The last thing he’s interested in doing is falling in love with a forty-six year old widow while renting her forty-foot RV for his cross country tour. Without spoiling the story, I’ll just mention that while challenged by D’Anne and the trials and tribulations of being on the road twenty-four-seven with his band and a picky widow, not to mention a mystery he needs to help solve, he becomes the man he was meant to be…a true hero.

I don’t have any problems with dreamboats as heroes, but once in a while I like to spice up my reading life with grittier characters who have realistic flaws, guys like Will, Ken, and Tyler White. How about you?

Tell us who your favorite alternative hero is from either a book or a movie, and get your name in a drawing for your choice of either a print or e-book gift coupon for One for the Road from Amazon. 

Lynne Marshall (www.lynnemarshall.com)  is a multi-published author of Medical Romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon, with an upcoming Harlequin Special Edition, Courting His Favorite Nurse, due out 3/12. Her current release is a full length contemporary romance, One for the Road, from The Wild Rose Press 

Lynne believes it’s never too late to fall in love, and that second chances are gifts from life which are not to be squandered.