Maria Lewis

Tolkien's, your C.S.

Lewis, your Neil Gaiman's, your Ben Aronovich's, you know, pick any other male name from that world, basically.

Well, there's so many examples of

what people would consider like traditional myths and legends, right?

And those originally, or let's say like in the last 20 to 30 years being, you know, how many versions of Arthurian myths and legends did we see?

How many versions of Greek and Roman classical stories did we see switched up to be put in a modern setting or characters that are being gender bent or vice versa?

But

That is largely because the people greenlighting those, I'm not saying those stories weren't good.

A lot of those stories are really incredible and have long lasting legacies.

But a big part of the reason we saw so many of those is the people greenlighting those projects, the editors, the managing editors, the publishers, the publishing houses saw themselves represented in those backgrounds and recognize those stories.

And now we're getting to this point where you have authors like

Daniel Jose Alda coming through or Julia Kawaga with Shadow of the Fox were starting to expand outside of this sort of Western ideal that there is only five or six same stories that can be told and retold.

And those authors have massive followings, massive international followings, because there is a really hungry market out there who are thirsty to read stories from not just backgrounds that represent their own or

legends and myths and themes that are familiar to them, but people who have never been exposed to that stuff as well.

People who want to read something new and want to read something different.

I think

urban fantasy and just fantasy readers in general are really hospitable to new ideas.

They really want to be taken to new places.

They really want to consume content that they feel is fresh.

And I'm not saying that means it doesn't have to have tropes or stereotypes of the genre.