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Friday 10 March 2006

Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance?

Okay, so I thought I'd start the post with this question:

what's the difference between paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

Here are the Wikipedia meanings I found:

Paranormal romance
is a literary subgenre of speculative fiction, blending together themes from the genres of traditional fantasy, science fiction, or horror. Paranormal romance may range from traditional harlequin romances with a paranormal setting to stories where the main emphasis is on a science fiction or fantasy based plot with a romantic subplot included. Common hallmarks are romantic relationships between humans and vampires, humans and werewolves, and steampunk settings.

and

Contemporary fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, also known as contemporary urban fantasy, modern-day fantasy, or indigenous fantasy. These terms are used to describe stories set in the putative real world in contemporary times, in which, it is revealed, magic and magical creatures exist, either living in the interstices of our world or leaking over from alternate worlds.

I also found this very helpful article written by Liz Scheier - an Editor from the Roc imprint - via the Irene Goodman Literary Agency. And out of all the meanings, this one helped the most.

Yet... what is it that separates these two genres? They seem pretty interchangeable to me. If any of you guys have any articles or websites you can point me to which delves into this further, please let me know. I've become intrigued.

I'm really starting to think the genre I should be marketing my novels towards is paranormal urban fantasy with romance and horror elements. How's that sound? :)

And on that note, let's move onto today's progress:

(#####============ )
22,209 / 80,000 : 27.8%

20k
target for this week met! Yay...

Today's chunk o' words really got the main character deeper into a situation she was convinced she'd overcome already. She should've known real evil like this doesn't give up so easily, right? It's not good news for her, especially when there's so much more going on around her... ah, just when she thinks everything may settle down into some semi-quasi-normal rhythm, everything goes to hell - sometimes literally! ;) Poor thing doesn't realise this is just the beginning. By the time this novel's over all she'll be wanting to do is sleep for a month!

After re-reading the post, I reckon this trilogy might be closer and more at home with urban fantasy.

Well, hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I know I'm sure going to try... can't wait for the hubby to get home tonight. It's when the weekend really starts. We need to catch up on our fave shows for the past week. There was no time to watch them live, so we had to tape them all. I can't wait to see what happens in Supernatural - they're going back to the house where everything began. And House sounds interesting too... something about parents. As for Medium, no idea what it's about but I'm looking forward to finding out.

3 comments:

C. T. Adams said...

Hey kiddo! Mule is now officially setting off on his swim. :)

I'm so glad your writing is going well. Cathy is very knowledgeable about which sub-genres are which so if you really have a question, drop an e-mail that says "HEY CATHY" and she'll probably answer it for you.

Have some health stuff going on, AND deadlines looming, which means that I'm not blogging as often, but I'm trying to keep up. Anyway, take care of yourself and give the family a hug for me.

Anonymous said...

Happy Friday!
A few posts back you said:

"Can I ask you what/why you didn't like the latest (Ep I, II, III) Star Wars movies? Was there a particular reason?

Oh, and you have to check out Army of Darkness. Sure, they've released about a thousand different versions on DVD, but it's a blast. Really funny. Bruce Campbell's a legend - honestly, he kicks major butt."

Yes, I know I really need to see "Army of Darkness" for sure, just a matter of doing that, I hear about it all teh time. Maybe I'll order it from amazon.com, what was the best one in that trilogy by the way? Regarding "Star Wars," I just thought that episodes 1, 2 and 3 were lacking, they were poorly written, really bad acting, Jar-Jar Binks annoyed me, Anakin's wife annoyed me, Anakin annoyed me and I thought they were poorly written (ouch I was harsh there, ha).
Jim

Yolanda Sfetsos said...

Hey Cie! Take care of yourself, okay? And THANKS for sending that hardworking mule on it's way over! ;) Looking forward to it!

OUCH Jimbo! I guess you didn't like much about Ep I, II and III, huh? :)

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