What do I call it?

I just added a new author and character to my list of favorites, which includes Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake and gang and Merry Gentry and her men of fae, Jim Butcher and the Dresden Files, Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series, and Kim Harrison and her witch, Rachel Morgan. To the list I now add Carrie Vaughn and her creation, Kitty Norville. Kitty is a reluctant werewolf and a radio D.J..

I started to wonder how to classify these new stories. Paranormal romances? No. Mysteries? No. Science Fiction? No. Fantasy? Maybe, but not really. Perhaps we need a new name, a new sub-genre.

The first Anita Blake stories by Laurell K. Hamilton were originally sold as romances. But from the very beginning, they didn’t quite fit. I seem to remember that Laurell K. Hamilton belonged to a writers’ group called The Alternate Historians or something like that. Could Anita Blake fall into the Science Fiction sub-genre Alternate History, where an event changes history? In this case, the event was vampires coming out of the closet. Her books were also mysteries. Anita Blake is often referred to as a paranormal investigator. When you look Laurell K. Hamilton up, she is classified as a Science Fiction/Fantasy author.

So what do Anita Blake, Merry Gentry, Harry Dresden, Sookie Stackhouse, Rachel Morgan all have in common? They have to do with the paranormal.

Dark fantasy is another term I’ve heard used, since they are fantasy, but with the dark side of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures of the night. But Dark Fantasy has been linked with horror, and usually these books tend to be on the light, often humorous side.

Paranormal romances have become extremely popular with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, even angels. People can’t seem to get enough of them. But although each of the above mentioned series have romantic elements, even erotica, they don’t really fit into the classic romance. Or even paranormal romance.

They also had mystery elements, but as the stories progressed, the relationships and the world became more important and often overshadowed the mystery. So they really don’t fit the term mystery, or even paranormal mystery.

I came across another term, Magic Realism. That certainly sounded like a possibility. But I did some research. It is narrowly defined, to represent first a style of art and later a particular kind of literature, in Latin America in the 1940's. While in most ways, these books don’t match the criteria for Magic Realism, they do in one area, that the supernatural is considered real by the characters.

Bruce Holland Rogers says, “If a magazine editor these days asks for contributions that are magical realism, what she's really saying is that she wants contemporary fantasy written to a high literary standard.” It is a marketing term.

There is one other term that I have heard used to describe them -- Urban Fantasy. Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series is referred to as an urban fantasy on her website.

According to Wikipedia, Urban Fantasy is a subset of contemporary fantasy, consisting of magical novels and stories set in contemporary, real-world, urban settings. Either in what is called open, where the magic and paranormal events are accepted to exist or closed, where they exist, but remain hidden. It has also become a term used in films, which include movies and TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and the Dresden Files, a show based on Jim Butcher’s books.

So I guess Urban Fantasy is best fit.