New Voices Telling New Scary Stories

Hearing a lot about Monster Lit/Urban Fantasy at this year’s BEA. Apparently Stefanie Meyers and the Twilight series has opened the door back up and reawakened tremendous interest in the subject. At yesterday’s day of dialog, a panel discussed this hot genre. Panelists included authors Cassandra Clare (City of Bones), Anton Strout (Dead to Me), and Jordan Summers (Red), along with publisher Jason Rekulak (Quirk Books), and librarian Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Library, NY.
Many readers of Monster Lit/Urban Fantasy are also fans of other genres including romance and mystery which helps to explain its popularity. Romance readers are voracious readers and will happily cross genres. Many of the recent offerings have a romance plot at the center.

While all of the panelists discussed their published works and works in progress, much of the panel’s conversation centered on the groundbreaking, “Pride and Prejudice with Zombies” which has generated tremendous buzz in the industry, with libraries and bookstores unable to keep the book on the shelves and movie rights being optioned. The publisher (Quirk) also is pursuing zombie-fying other classic works of literature. Circulation of the original Pride and Prejudice has gone up as well. Discussing their influences panelists named “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” Stephen King, noir detective fiction, Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allen Poe. Blogs and websites for persons interested in learning more include:
Fangs, Fur and Fey
community.livejournal.com/fangs_fur_fey
and urbanfantasyland.wordpress.com. Also see June 1, 2008, LJ “Collection Development/Urban Fantasy, The City, by Nanette Wargo Donohue.