Maria Lewis

You know, the Iliad and the Odyssey would, if published today, be classified as fantasy.

So I thought I really have to hook the reader.

Fantasy as a genre is basically anything that is hyper real.

I mean, it's a very broad term.

If you just Google fantasy, the genre, you'll be inundated with many, many, many Pinterest collages of, you know, Venn diagrams with circles overlapping.

And what is speculative fiction, which is often a, it's like a fancy term for what fantasy is.

It's, you know, fiction that like has

fantastical elements to it, I guess, which seems pretty self-explanatory.

But the genre that I write in or sub-genre, if you will, is called urban fantasy.

And again, that's a term that's very industry-based.

It's not something that necessarily readers would identify with as they do with something like young adult or science fiction, but urban fantasy, paranormal fantasy is

that basically means anything that has a fantastical element that is set within a world that we recognize today.

So if you were using Harry Potter, for example, a lively red text, you know, that in a way is open fantasy because it has Hogwarts and magic and wizards and witches, which are fantastical elements, but it also has a real world setting with London and Scotland and the real life places that are entrenched in the story, if that makes sense.

Urban fantasy that has a bit of grit to it oftentimes I feel like can be very stereotyped as masculine.

You know, the work of men gets called gritty or gets called edgy, whereas women oftentimes our stuff sort of gets taken less seriously or it gets undermined by some of the descriptors.

But

A lot of my work has gritty elements to it.

It has supernatural creatures, predominantly women, so banshees, werewolves, witches, ghosts, you name it, mermen, all different types of monsters and creatures.

that are representations for different types of women that I want to tell stories about in the world.

So that includes women who are, say, like late teens, early 20s, 30s, 40s, women who are gay, women who are biracial, women who are disabled, all different types of women and all different facets of the female experience.