Moonspell, by Regan Forest (romance novel, 1989)

[lb_lee]

"Nicholas Paul is you, lad. This lovely lassie found you at once in her head, but she could not find you in person for a long time to come. So you became Nicholas."

Blurb: An adventure writer runs into her protagonist in real life... but how can this be? And what does it even mean to have life-or-death power over this poor bastard? Now they have to work together to figure out what happened.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is like a romance novel version of Stranger Than Fiction, and a lot of attention gets paid to the power dynamics of what it means to be author and character; it really, really sucks, turns out, and this is super relatable for anyone who's had similar concerns! This is a very traditional heterosexual romance, but the characters behave like decent, reasonable people and the idea is neat. If you're into Harlequin romances, this might be for you!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, fusion/integration, identityblending, fictioneers, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This book is available on paperback, and some generous soul has bootlegged an OCR PDF of it on piracy websites. It also got a translation in Italian, astonishingly, under the title Stregati dalla luna!

Misc Notes: In the About the Author section: "Regan Forest has, for a long time, fantasized about creating a character--and then meeting him in real life. That spark generated Moonspell."

Comments

Content Warnings

[lb_lee]

It's a traditional Harlequin romance, so you needn't fear much, but part of the breaking of the moon curse involves killing off the fictional character, and there are multiple close shaves as they try to work out how to do this without killing our hero. Also magical superstitious Scottish people and Bushmen, the latter of whom wisely stay out of the book.

There is also a character with the name Dick Chadburn, which I can't stop snickering about.

[starfallhaven]

"a romance novel version of stranger than fiction"

You have my attention!!

[lb_lee]

Miranda: it is very heterosexual and traditional, so I’m not sure if you would like it, but there’s a PDF of it on Anna’s, if you want to see if the writing is to your taste! It goes A LOT into how uncomfortable the power dynamics and such are, very inspiring!

Perversely, I found the romance the least interesting part of it.

[acorn_squash]

It looks like there's also an e-book, although good luck getting your hands on it.

[lb_lee]

Strange, the book isn’t listed as having ever gotten reprinted on ISFDB, and it’s usually decently reliable...