Читать книгу The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts - Stacia Kane, Stacia Kane - Страница 5

Dark urban fantasy.

I find those words so exciting. Because urban fantasy can be anything, really; you can do anything with it. You can write about a drug-addicted witch who works for an atheistic totalitarian magic-based “Church” who runs the world after a ghost apocalypse. You can write about a punk-rock ghetto run by drug lords, where the aforementioned apocalypse means basics like electricity are hard to come by. You can write about ghosts walking the earth, using weapons, killing people. You can write about those same ghosts captured and forced to “live” in a vast underground cavern from which escape is almost impossible.

And you can play with that. You can think of what sort of world blossoms around such basic information, about revolutionary groups and legal vs. illegal magic and the mix of tech and magic, and what knowing exactly what happens when you die does to humanity at large. You can explore how the basic characteristics of humanity, both the good and the bad, might be heightened or suppressed by such a world, and in what ways they might stay the same.

But it’s not just fantasy worlds and the greater issues of humanity. It’s individual people. One of the things that appeals to me so much about dark urban fantasy – that has appealed to me ever since I read NEVERWHERE fifteen years ago (I know there’s some debate over this, but as far as I’m concerned NEVERWHERE is indeed urban fantasy) – is the lack of rules. It may not be a new genre, but it’s a genre still finding its classifications and tropes, which means there’s plenty of room for experimentation. You can do so much with it. You can write very unconventional heroes and heroines, you can write very dark worlds, you can explore just about anything.

So many genres seem very set in their ways at this point. And I know there are people who think urban fantasy is nothing more than kick-ass chicks in black leather slaying and sleeping with nightclub-owning vampires, written in a sassy first-person voice. But it isn’t. The book you’re holding right now isn’t. That doesn’t make it any less dark urban fantasy, anymore than it makes those other books any more dark urban fantasy. It’s all dark UF, and that’s why the genre is so exciting, and why I love writing it.

The Downside Ghosts series is about a witch plagued by the figurative ghosts of a horrific, abusive childhood that she takes drugs in a futile attempt to forget, living in a world plagued by literal ghosts who want nothing more than to destroy every living being they find in a futile attempt to steal that life energy for themselves. It’s about black magic and punk rock and drugs and sex and horror and misery; it’s about finding acceptance in unlikely places and about looking for acceptance in the wrong places; it’s about how one cannot hide from the world forever; it’s about our weaknesses and our strengths; it’s about hope and despair.

And hopefully it’s pretty damn scary and exciting, too.

I certainly hope you think so, and that you enjoy it.