On Selecting a Genre

I’ve decided that I want to play in the same sandbox as Charles deLint, Richelle Mead, and others that I admire, and call Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster urban fantasy, because I can.  It is urban, of course, since it takes place in a city.  It’s not strictly horror, because although horrific things happen and it contains a lot of standard horror tropes — Cthulhu primary among them — I’m not really writing it as a horror story, or even as a horror spoof.  It isn’t really fantasy, not by any strict genre definition; there are no wizards, no hobbits, and not a single elf to be seen.  The generic catch phrase is, I suppose, "speculative fiction", but "urban speculative fiction" is just too clumsy for my taste, so "urban fantasy" it is, until some publisher decides otherwise.

Oh, and I still claim that it is "inspired by true events".

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.