That was the first writers conference I had ever attended and it was also the first time I learned how important "genre" is in the world of publishing. They drill into you over and over how you must "know your genre." Well, I didn't know my genre. So I started asking around.
The first question I would get is, "What's your book about?" So I would proceed to give them a summary and out of their mouths pops, "Urban fantasy."
Urban fantasy?
As I said, I'd never heard of it.
Well, I thought, if I'm writing in a genre I've never heard of, I had better start doing some research. So I did. Most writers conferences seem to cater more to commercial genre writers than to literary writers, so there were plenty of examples to choose from right there. I discovered that one of the authors at the conference was writing in the genre of urban fantasy, so I took a look at her books.
On the first page, the main character, a young woman, whips out a sword and starts slaying vampires.
Okay, I think, these people obviously did not understand me when I was describing my novel. It's absolutely nothing like this. It's about magic, not vampires. It's subtle. The magic creeps up on you.
So another year goes by. I finish the manuscript. I begin revising. All the while, I'm trying to figure out what the genre is. I come up with descriptions like, "magical realism where the speculative elements are woven into the real world."
I probably got closest to it with "occult fiction" or "contemporary literary fantasy." I wrote the novel after reading all of Dion Fortune's novels. She wrote occult fiction, but it certainly wasn't fantasy. The magic she wrote about was real, based on her knowledge of the occult.
Eventually, while searching for an agent, I discovered an author, Mike Shevdon (represented by an agent I'm interested in querying), who wrote a novel titled Sixty-One Nails. Its genre is Urban Fantasy.
Now I'm finally beginning to understand what Urban Fantasy really is. I realize now that those books I was examining at the conference were bottom-of-the-barrel books. They were crap pulp fiction published by a microscopically small press. They are not the standard that defines Urban Fantasy. In fact, true Urban Fantasy writers are so sick of teenage vampire slayers, they want to vomit.
Although I could still use terms like "occult fiction," "contemporary literary fantasy," or "contemporary speculative fiction," it turns out that "Urban Fantasy," nails it right on the head.
Wikipedia defines Urban Fantasy as such: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_fantasy
Fortunately the genre is still fairly new, so its traits are defined by each new novel published in that genre. Gradually, as the genre grows, it will probably split into sub-sub genres (it's already a sub-genre of fantasy). So there will be a sub-sub genre of vampire urban fantasy.... which I will stay far away from. It's already way over-done.
Now that I understand the genre of urban fantasy, it makes sense to intentionally revise the novel to make it more urban and more fantasy, in order to get it solidly in that genre.
This is starting to feel like the endlessly-revised novel. I finished the first draft over a year ago (September 4, 2009 to be exact). I've been revising since then. Fortunately I've also been writing Journey to Artemisia at the same time and it's almost finished. Journey will probably get published before The Magical Diaries of Lilith Fyerider, but that's okay. I've learned so much in the past few years. The trajectory of my learning curve has the same shape as the space shuttle launch.
Journey to Artemisia isn't urban fantasy because there are only minor urban settings. It is categorized as contemporary fantasy. I'm planning Journey as the first book in a series and will start the query process in mid-November.
I don't know yet if Magical Diaries will be a series, but there is definitely potential for it, and it seems now-a-days publishers of sci-fi & fantasy are looking to publish series because they gain a following and that increases sales.
