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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Urban Fantasy News

Fellow Wild Rose Press author, Karen Duvall, just attended the Pacific NW Writers Association conference in Seattle and posted on her blog . . .
“The buzz word for the weekend (conference) was URBAN FANTASY!!! All I can say is: What the hell took everyone so long? I've been loving it for years, long before it was tagged with a subgenre. So it's thrilling to see that it's being embraced like this by the publishing community. Yo, my writer friends, they want it. Bad. If you write it, this is one hot commodity. Polish your prose and get it out there. And make sure it's set in the city. No kidding.”

Thanks, Karen, for the update.

A few weeks ago, I, too, attended a conference – the Romance Writers of America in Dallas. Roughly two thousand romance-minded writers filled one hotel. Yep, it was fun and there were great contacts to be made. See my post on SPARKLE THIS! to learn what to do with all those business cards from any conference. During the RWA conference, several of my fellow writers who tackle the Urban Fantasy market found the agents and editors some what mixed on their forecast for this subgenre. Bottom line: the vibes weren’t great on this market from traditional ‘romance’ publishers. But it does appear, according to Karen’s news, the ‘regular’ world of fiction writing has found the subgenre of URBAN FANTASY and is pushing hard for manuscripts.

I recently finished WIRED, by Liz Maverick, a Dorchester (sci-fi/romance) release. Great cartoon cover, catchy title and good book blurb. That said, I had mixed feelings on this book. While Ms. Maverick made sure to keep the romance alive on every page, and to develop a heroine with a number of quirky and likeable attributes, I found the external plot (time threading) to be extremely complicated and hard to follow. I’ll admit, I’m not a huge reader of ‘all things Science Fiction’ but it was the actual explanation behind the time threading that threw me for a loop. Several rereads of detailed passages didn’t clear up my confusion. Of course, that is just MHO regarding this book – many may find WIRED, the perfect Sci-Fi read.

If you want to see more of Karen’s post regarding the PRWAC, go to Karen Duvall

Writing trend news? Do share.

3 comments:

Karen Duvall said...

Hey, Sandra! Just to add to the buzz I heard over the weekend, there was chatter about getting more male readers into UF. Most of the guys read horror and SF, some fantasy, and are getting into UF now, which is why publishers are wanting more. The word was that a really good UF manuscript is hard to find, and they're looking for special books with unique characters and story lines. I'll talk about this more on my blog.

K.M. Saint James said...

Thanks, Karen, for the great information. I'll be back to your blog.

Sherry A Davis said...

Thank you to both you and Karen. I'm so glad to hear the PNWA was a success for those writing urban fantasy.

Karen, I'm heading over to your blog.

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