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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: MatthewD44 on April 09, 2008, 03:51:16 AM
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I was going to see if we could get a definitive list of the different types of creatures and the day job they hold down for the urban fantasy books we all know and enjoy
Jim has a wizard (detective)
Richelle Mead has 2 vampires (HS kids), a succubus (book store manager), and a shaman (no clue)
Patricia Briggs (just started this series) has a walk or skinwalker (mechanic) depends on how you define them
Caitlin Kittredge has a werewolf (cop)
So please drop in one of the main characters that you like and see if we get a good list of creatures and professions that someone is using or has used...
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CE Murphy has Joanne Walker (aka Siobhan Walkingstick) is a shaman and a detective (past professions include police mechanic and patrol officer)
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Kim Harrison has a witch who is pretty much like a private eye/bounty hunter.
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Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt and P.N. Elrod's Jack Fleming are both vampire sort-of PIs.
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The "main character as PI/Cop" thing is leaned on heavily in urban fantasy, just as it is in mystery/suspense novels and for the same reason. Murder is big stakes, and if your main is a PI/cop, it's easy to explain why they're involved with a murder book after book. Otherwise, you end up with your gardener-main-character involved in one murder after another and the reasons for the involvement become more and more contrived (found a body in the garden in book 1, found a body in someone else's garden in book 2, and in book 3 she found a body in the gardening supply store). You start thinking the cops should just tail the main character around, since she'll eventually lead them to yet another body. Plus, no reader sits there and wonders, "Why doesn't she just call the cops?" when your character IS a cop.
So if you don't go the PI/Cop route, you have to think of a main plot that has high enough stakes to catch the reader's interest but the cops don't know about it or won't investigate it.
Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde was a romance novelist who had a "calling", I guess you could say, to investigate supernatural crimes, and in one of her three books she was called in by the police to help investigate a series of murders.
Tanya Huff's Vicky Nelson is a PI/ex-cop, but her spin-off series features Tony who's working his way up from production assistant on a bad TV show while he's learning about being a wizard.
Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake started off as a professional necromancer but also had limited Federal authority as a vampire slayer and, last I read, was a Federal marshal.
Rob Thurman's characters Cal and Niko are ... well, now Cal's a bartender and I dunno what Niko's up to when he's not being a bad-ass.
Marc del Franco's Connor Grey is a druid who's lost most of his powers, but used to be a member of that universe's magic cops (basically). He's a PI now who works with both the mortal cops and the Guild from time to time.
Simon R. Greene's John Taylor is a PI in the Nightside.
Rachel Caine's Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden... sometimes. It's complicated. But she's one of a group of people who tries to see that the weather doesn't get too cataclysmic.
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I always though the dichotomy of an undead pediatrician would be quite resonant as a basis for urban fantasy. A creature of the dead who aids in helping life come into the world would be useful for some weighty themes. Yet the only ideas that spring to mind are all very short gag type stories. :P
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Ravirn and Cerice in the Webmage urban-fantasy-esque books are hackers that look like elves.
Eddi in War for the Oaks is a rock singer.
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I always though the dichotomy of an undead pediatrician would be quite resonant as a basis for urban fantasy. A creature of the dead who aids in helping life come into the world would be useful for some weighty themes. Yet the only ideas that spring to mind are all very short gag type stories. :P
One of my favorite characters to write about of my own is a vampire paramedic. Who better to be able to see death approaching and stave it off, you know?
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F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack is kind of outside the normal P.I./Cop genre, in that he "fixes situations" that are outside the norm, and often involve the paranormal.
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I always though the dichotomy of an undead pediatrician would be quite resonant as a basis for urban fantasy. A creature of the dead who aids in helping life come into the world would be useful for some weighty themes. Yet the only ideas that spring to mind are all very short gag type stories. :P
I was going to say that there is a character like that in a German vampire novel I recently read (Kinder des Judas bei Markus Heitz), but she is a nurse who helps children who are dying (as in holding their hand and telling them bedtime stories). edit: and yeah, she is a vampire.
Reading this thread makes me sad. Are there really only these PI and hero types in Urban Fantasy, or is that because of a narrow definition of UF?! E.g. if I look at Gaiman's work...
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Reading this thread makes me sad. Are there really only these PI and hero types in Urban Fantasy, or is that because of a narrow definition of UF?! E.g. if I look at Gaiman's work...
Well, there's also Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas, or Brother Odd, a monk who can see the spirit world.
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Reading this thread makes me sad. Are there really only these PI and hero types in Urban Fantasy, or is that because of a narrow definition of UF?! E.g. if I look at Gaiman's work...
Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville is a radio DJ who's just sort of there when everything happens.
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Reading this thread makes me sad. Are there really only these PI and hero types in Urban Fantasy, or is that because of a narrow definition of UF?! E.g. if I look at Gaiman's work...
Only the last third of King of Morning, Queen of Day is really urban fantasy - it's a generational story - but Enye, the protagonist in that, is a bicycle courier. I am very attached to it because it's set in Dublin in the early 90s at the same time I was an undergrad, and the details of place and setting are absolutely perfect.