Because It COULD Happen

(Cross posted to Fangs, Fur & Fey)

On of the questions asked of authors on the Fangs, Fur & Fey list was: "Why do you write urban fantasy?"

I have to first start by saying that I’m a huge fan of urban fantasy. I read a lot of it as a teen/young adult (which was some time ago now), probably for me the most memorable of which was Emma Bull’s WAR FOR THE OAKS. I still read a lot of it, in fact.

This is going to sound extremely fannish/Mary Sue, but what I love about urban fantasy, is that, well, that it could happen... to me.

When I was a kid, I loved to play pretend. I had the kind of overactive imagination that sent me into Hixon Forest every day of summer vacation with a wooden sword and a couple of willing friends. I’d still be there, except at some point it became somewhat socially inappropriate for me to tell people to call me “Zurg, Amazon Queen of Venus.” (Except maybe in the bedroom, but that’s another story.)

Urban Fantasy is an invitation to play again. Because the settings are contemporary, I can imagine that that unwashed looking guy talking to himself two seats in front of me on the city bus is, in fact, a werewolf. That’s the sort of stuff I like to play with in my own novels (and in the enjoyment of other people’s)... the taking of real things and added a supernatural or paranormal spin on them. I mean, what if all the guys/gals who talk to themselves are, in point of fact, talking to something real? What if those plastic bags blown around by the wind are messengers to some kind of new breed of urban faerie? My friend Kelly McCullough based a whole universe in an as-yet-unsold fey book called THE URBANA on that idea.

It makes walking to work more interesting, you know?