What Genre?
Contemporary Fantasy
Also known as modern fantasy, these are stories in which the fantasy world is set in the present day, or at least the present day of the author when they wrote it. This genre can overlap with other genres, especially urban fantasy, but for the most part it will feature “present day” fantasies that don’t fit will into other genres.
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Dark Fantasy
Fantasy books dealing with difficult ethical, moral or psychological topics, often focusing on strong character development over a plot driven story.
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Epic Fantasy
These are your more traditional fantasy stories, often with long journeys that a hero most go on, overcoming multiple challenges to reach their goal. They often feature large development and growth of the main character and frequently make good use of writing archetypes, tropes and common story arcs to great effect.
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Horror Fantasy
The horror that boarders on the fantastical. These are your creepy and scary stories that feature the mystical, magical, paranormal or just completely unknown to make their scares. While it has some overlap with the paranormal fantasy genre, I’ve tried to include any paranormal fantasies written to be scary under this category, while leaving the non-scary-intended ones that just happen to still be paranormal for the paranormal fantasy section.
*Note: This is a difficult category to sort for, and I’m left to make a best guess as to whether the book’s horror is actually fantay-based or just a “real world” monster or scenario. So if a non-fantasy horror book occasionally slips through into this genre, you have my apologies, and I at least hope you still found it enjoyable.
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Magic Realism
A complex genre with a lot of minute definitions. Sometimes call marvelous realism or fabulism, magic realism is defined by the magical or supernatural being present in an otherwise normal-world setting. They often feature an overabundance of detail and description, well formed and believable realistic settings, that are intruded upon by the strange, unusual, and unexplainable fantastical elements, leading to a sense of mystery and uncertainty.
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Paranormal Fantasy
Fantasies featuring ghosts, demons and other paranormal experiences. Set in the past, present, future or completely alternate dimension, these stories can cover a diverse range of areas, and can make for interesting reading.
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Urban Fantasy
Take the fables, fokelore, myths and legends of old and throw then into the urban landscape of modern cities and you’ll find yourself in the genre of urban fantasy. These stories often feature aspects of social and political criticism, and focus more heavily on character development and interaction rather than being plot driven.
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Rediscoverables
These are books that fall into any of the above listed genres, but have been published since before this store launched. Most of them have already found some moderation of success, more so that the other books featured in The Novel Market, but they are still self-published. I wanted to include some of these already more notable self-published books to give you readers some tried and true books among your indie explorations.
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Out of Genre
Currently, The Novel Market specialized only in sub-genres of fantasy, but every now and then I run across a really good self-published horror, hard sci-fi or romance book that doesn’t meet the strict definitions of fantasy. So I made this category to include those books for those of you looking to venture outside the fantasy genre and support some of the other indie authors out there.
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Personal Favorites
These are books that I have read and loved throughout the years as I’ve grown from childhood and into adulthood. Most of them are not self-published books, though some have gone relatively unknown. Others are long running series that have reach bestseller status and are widely know. All of them, though, have had a strong influence on me, shaping my view of the world, inspiring my writing style and cultivating my love of fantasy stories.
Even though they don’t fit the indie-author theme of The Novel Market, I still wanted to share these book with you that I hold so dear.