Limyaael

I’ve been writing unearnestly for almost two years. I have a depressingly small number of words in mostly disjointed segments of a story that I refer to as “rural fantasy.” I don’t much like the swords and sorcerers fantasy anymore. They all run together in my mind, pulped from the same meat grinder. The vampire thing has really been overdone. At B&N (the only game in town anymore), only the big names or formulaic writing is on the shelves. Borders will take a chance on a new author occasionally, but is about the same as B&N but with smaller shelving and fewer stores.

The biggest problem I see with urban fantasy is it’s the same fairies and elves repeatedly. It’s as if Ireland invaded America and the old world fairy fights off the new world fairy. There’s no room for anything different.

Charles DeLint may not be the most original writer but at least he left the Northeast and delved into the Southwest a bit. Unfortunately, he fell into the same trap of old world v. new world. C. J. Cherryh’s Ruslaka and other books were good. Orson Scott Card did an excellent job with his Russian-based fantasy. The rest seem cut from the same cloth.

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Many people try to hop onto whatever is popular at the moment, and I think they get left behind unless they have a) a talent for that genre already and b) a series that's sufficiently different to survive the crash when the genre stops being so popular. For example, I don't read vampire stories any more precisely because I've gotten so indifferent from all the similarities.

de Lint did write one story, Moonheart, that shows Celtic magic interacting with Native American magic. I dislike him mostly for his character similarities, not because of his worldbuilding.

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