Penguin Imprint Focus: Subgenres in SF/F - Urban Fantasy

(View entire post here)

Urban fantasy is an incredibly popular subgenre fantasy that is garnering attention for drawing legions of new fans to the field. Urban Fantasy novels are set in contemporary, real-world settings in which magical and supernatural occurrences take place, as opposed to tradition fantasy who’s settings are wholly imaginary. From wizards in Chicago to telepaths in Louisiana, these authors combine the familiar with the strange and the macabre with the commonplace to great acclaim. Below are just a few of Roc and Ace's stirling authors:

Established names:

Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris, who has been writing for over twenty years, is a native of the Mississippi Delta. She began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, and published two stand-alone mysteries a few years later. From there she went on to write successful category mysteries, which are now read in Japan, Great Britain, Greece, Germany, Thailand, Spain, France, and Russia.

In the late 90’s she had the idea of combining her talent for mystery writing with her interest in paranormal fiction. Dead Until Dark, the resulting novel, made Charlaine a two decades in the making overnight success. Since then, her work has regularly appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Harris is married and the mother of three. She lives in a small town in Arkansas. She is an avid reader and cinemaphile.

Jim Butcher

Born in Missouri in 1971, Jim Butcher is renowned for his Dresden Files series, the first of which he initially wrote as a writing exercise in 1996. After floating the novel unsuccessfully amongst different publishers, he met an agent at a convention who agreed to represent his novel. His latest book rose to #5 on The New York Times bestseller list, and the series has generated both a television series and a forthcoming comic book series. A martial arts enthusiast whose resume includes a long list of skills rendered obsolete at least two hundred years ago, Jim Butcher claims to have turned to writing as a career because anything else probably would have driven him insane. He lives in Missouri with his wife, his son and a ferocious guard dog.

Patricia Briggs

Patricia Briggs lives in Montana with her husband, children, and six horses. As a child she used to enjoy going into the woods at night with her friends and seeing how long it took to scare them—and whether she could do so before she scared herself first. She graduated with a degree in history, and is fascinated by the Middle Ages. She was first published in 1993, and her out of print novels are now considered collector’s items.

Karen Chance

Karen Chance was born in Orlando, FL, and graduated from university with a degree in advanced history. She has lived in France, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, but always comes back to America. She currently lives in Central Florida, the home of make-believe, which may explain a lot.

Kat Richardson

(From her website) Kat Richardson was born in California--the second of three precocious children--and survived growing up in a small college town under the LA smog shield long enough to earn a BA in Magazine Editing from Cal. State Long Beach. She worked in the magazine business in LA for a while, then moved on to curriculum writing and editing for the Gemological Institute of America. Later, she moved to Seattle and added Technical Editing to her skills.

Her father was an English teacher with a degree in Classical Literature whose first bed-time story to his kids was reading aloud from a translation of The Odyssey. She claims to have started her fiction career by telling fantastic lies to friends and family, and wrote her first short story in First Grade--it was called The Pickle Bush, since Kat was then ignorant of the origin of pickles. She does better research now and confines lying to more acceptable forms of fiction.

Kat Richardson lives on a sailboat in Seattle with her husband, and two ferrets. She rides a motorcycle, shoots target pistol, and does not own a TV.

Simon Green

Simon Green was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England (where he still resides, right up the river from Shakespeare). He graduated from Leicester University with an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature, and also has a combined Humanities degree. After years of publishers' rejection letters, he sold an incredible seven novels in 1988, and has continued to publish even since. He is a New York Times bestseller for his novelization of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

“New Kids on the Block”:

Mark Del Franco

After several years in editorial and administrative roles in the publishing field and as a proposal writer in institutional finance, Mark Del Franco is now pursuing free lance work in both these fields. He lives with his partner, Jack, in Boston, Massachusetts, where the orchids tremble in fear since he killed Jack’s palm plants.

Chris Marie Green

Chris Marie Green, former school teacher turned full-time writer, gets out of the office by taking long trips to places such as Japan, Italy, and New Orleans. When she’s not causing international incidents, she enjoys practicing yoga, taking part in fangirl movie and TV program analysis, and writing romance novels under the name Crystal Green.

Phaedra Weldon

Phaedra Weldon was born in Florida and attended Georgia Southern University from where she launched a career in the graphics arts field. She began writing at the age of 10, reworking the endings of her favorite television shows, especially such classic favorites as Scooby Doo. She has had short fiction published in a number of anthologies and online sites. She lives with her husband and daughter in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ilona Andrews

"Ilona Andrews" is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Andrew is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Andrew was not an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was not the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Andrew is still sore about that.) Andrew and Ilona currently reside in Georgia with their two children and two dogs, one of whom is clearly neurotic and the other who believes herself to be a thirty pound wolf. They are working on Kate Daniels’s next adventure.

ROC

Ace

Penguin books

imprint

editors

authors

urban fantasy

history

book publisher

books

fantasy

sci-fi

science fiction

publisher