Are Readers Growing Tired of New Urban Fantasy?

[synobal]

ya I hate the books with under dressed guys/girls on the cover. It's the sort of book you're embarrassed to take out into public and read.

[Dresdenus Prime]

So here's a question, in a story I'm working up, which I think is pretty cool so far, I'm in need of a couple vampires. I can't help it. They have the whole fangs and suck blood thing. Now I do intend on making them the bad guys, and menacing and sneaky, no sparkles here. But I can't help but wonder if I try to sell this to a publisher or an agent or even to readers will they see vampire and say "oh God not more of them..."

[Snowleopard]

Hey DP.  I suspect that a publisher unless you make your vamps
radically different is going to go - "oh crud - not more of them."
You might look into vampires in other cultures.
I know that the Japanese have at least one story of a vampire cat.

[Spot]

Buy some damn clothes you twats. lol

The 10 year old in me chuckled really loudly.

ya I hate the books with under dressed guys/girls on the cover. It's the sort of book you're embarrassed to take out into public and read.

ebook readers solve that problem nicely. Read what you want, no one's the wiser.

Wanna see some gorgeous people who are 1) fully, non-skankily clothed and 2) not twisting their spines into pretzels for the Sexy Shot? Look at Chris McGrath's covers (well, maybe ONE that pushes the envelope, but you'll see that as a rule, everyone's dressed, non-twisted and still attractive): http://christianmcgrath.com/

The man is a brilliant artist. If I had room left on the walls in my apartment, I'd buy some of his artwork.

[Shecky]

The man is a brilliant artist. If I had room left on the walls in my apartment, I'd buy some of his artwork.

Since my wife is a Jim fan and her birthday fell very close to the GS release date, I got her a Jim-signed copy of the book PLUS a full-sized print of the GS cover signed by both Jim and Chris. It's freaking GORGEOUS. It's up on the wall next to our print of Priscellie's Alera map.

[Spot]

Since my wife is a Jim fan and her birthday fell very close to the GS release date, I got her a Jim-signed copy of the book PLUS a full-sized print of the GS cover signed by both Jim and Chris. It's freaking GORGEOUS. It's up on the wall next to our print of Priscellie's Alera map.

*sigh* I have yet to find a spot for Priscellie's Alera map. I wish our apartment came with more walls.

[Nickeris86]

So here's a question, in a story I'm working up, which I think is pretty cool so far, I'm in need of a couple vampires. I can't help it. They have the whole fangs and suck blood thing. Now I do intend on making them the bad guys, and menacing and sneaky, no sparkles here. But I can't help but wonder if I try to sell this to a publisher or an agent or even to readers will they see vampire and say "oh God not more of them..."

I also have that concern but since my story is not urban fantasy and my "vampires" are a race with a culture I can make them very different from the current generation of blood suckers.

I agree with Snow-leopard look into other myths. Nearly every culture in the world has some sort of vampire like creature in them. A lot of the Asian vampires are messed up, Think floating heads with entrails hanging from them that they choke you to death with then feed.
Or you can go the old European style vamps where they were hideous walking corpses that slaughtered people. There was zero sexy vampires until Stoker.

[Dresdenus Prime]

My vampires definately don't have to be sexy. I need them to be humanoid to a point, but mostly I really need them because I need their blood drinking ability for the plot of the book. I'll look up other cultures and see what I can find too.

[Nickeris86]

the entrails flying head ones look humanoid until they feed then they get icky.

[synthesis]

I don't see urban fantasy going away.  Like any other genre, it has a large audience base.  Like any other genre, a work's success is going to be based on the story and characters--does the book draw the audience in?  But because the market is so flooded, word of mouth is probably incredibly important as well.  But that's the case with any book anyone writes. 

I think what might be more detrimental and beneficial (yes, contradiction there) is the e-reader market.  The problem is that now the market is even more flooded with books, short stories, etc. and a lot of them make you wonder who told the person they could write (okay, that was very snobby, but most of you have probably read those e-books that have literally no editing whatsoever, no character development, bland story, etc.).  These factors are the downside--a flooded book market overall, with much crap to wade through.

The plus side?  It's probably easier than ever to get published since there isn't a lot of revenue involved in publishing an e-book.  I also noticed that many authors offer their first books at a much discounted price in order to build up an audience--then the books get progressively more expensive as they build that audience base.  It's also very much looking like if you want a physical, print copy of the book published, you're going to need to achieve a certain amount of success digitally (sorta the same way paperback to hardback always worked).

[LizW65]

A writer who seems to be flourishing in this new category is Sarah Addison Allen. The one I read was Garden Spells. I don't even know where it's classed in the book stores. I guess it's Charmed without the demons and world threatening plot lines

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Meg:  have you read anything by Caroline Stevermer?  She's been around since the 80's and definitely falls into the "soft magic" category; she's been described as "Jane Austen with magic".  The supernatural elements in her books tend to be very subtle and based around ordinary household objects as magical foci.  I've never heard of Sarah Addison, but it sounds as though her work may be similar.




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[Madd]

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Meg:  have you read anything by Caroline Stevermer?  She's been around since the 80's and definitely falls into the "soft magic" category; she's been described as "Jane Austen with magic".  The supernatural elements in her books tend to be very subtle and based around ordinary household objects as magical foci.  I've never heard of Sarah Addison, but it sounds as though her work may be similar.




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Perhaps this has been covered before, but what exactly is "soft" magic?  Is that magic with poorly defined rules?  Maybe poorly isn't the right word.  The magic is more qualitative and less quantitative.

[LizW65]

Well, Google doesn't turn up anything relevant, but I was interpreting "soft magic" as "cozy" rather than "hard-boiled", to put it into mystery writing terms.
Rather than walking the mean streets and beating the crap out of bad guys magically, the protagonist might turn someone into a rosebush, or enchant them so they can only speak in rhymed couplets, for example.  (I could be completely misinterpreting the term, however, so someone feel free to correct me.)
ETA:  I hadn't considered the question in terms of rules at all; the kind of magic I was thinking of has very clearly defined rules indeed, it's just the style that is noticably different.

[trboturtle]

Brandon Sanderson defines Soft magic as magic that is just there, with no major explinations about it. He says in a blog post of his:

On one side of the continuum, we have books where the magic is included in order to establish a sense of wonder and give the setting a fantastical feel. Books that focus on this use of magic tend to want to indicate that men are a small, small part of the eternal and mystical workings of the universe. This gives the reader a sense of tension as they're never certain what dangersor wondersthe characters will encounter. Indeed, the characters themselves never truly know what can happen and what can't.

He also says:

The really good writers of soft magic systems very, very rarely use their magic to solve problems in their books.

OTOH, Hard magic he describes as this:

This is the side where the authors explicitly describes the rules of magic. This is done so that the reader can have the fun of feeling like they themselves are part of the magic, and so that the author can show clever twists and turns in the way the magic works. The magic itself is a character, and by showing off its laws and rules, the author is able to provide twists, worldbuilding, and characterization.
If the reader understands how the magic works, then you can use the magic (or, rather, the characters using the magic) to solve problems. In this case, it's not the magic mystically making everything better. Instead, it's the characters' wit and experience that solves the problems. Magic becomes another tooland, like any other tool, its careful application can enhance the character and the plot.

It's clear to me that my urban fantasy novel(s) are hard magic....

Craig

[asetti]

I think the problem is you have so many writers moving into UF who are not good story tellers.  The market gets flooded with bad stories books and then you hear UF is overdone and so over.  A good story with engaging characters is always a good read regardless of genre.  There are some Romance series that are GREAT reads because of this and frankly the Romance genre has been "overdone" for years.