Friday, April 8, 2011

Are There Subgenres That Cozy Authors Should Tackle?

I guess, technically, they’d be sub-subgenres, since Cozies themselves are a subgenre of Mystery.

Many of the sub-subs that have been covered already are Historical, Paranormal and Fantasy. Margaret Fazer writes two different series set in Medieval times, Madelyn Alt has her Bewitching series and, I have argued, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books are Cozies since Sookie solves a mystery in each book. And most of the modern cozies have an element of Chick Lit about them.

Then there are the sub-subs that are peculiar to Cozies. I’m talking about the cooking series, the craft shop mysteries, the professional woman (although not a police professional) series, etc.

What others can you think of that might work in the cozy realm? Looking at Romance subgenres what about Futuristic, Time-Travel or even Erotic? Okay, I’m thinking the last one would definitely NOT fall into the Cozy outline.

The Speculative Fiction oeuvre might give us a couple of the ones already mentioned plus Horror and Science Fiction in all its permutations. Gail Carriger already covered Steampunk with her Parasol Protectorate series. Anything falling under Horror would probably have to be funny in order to fit. And I’m not sure even that would help. Could we have zombies invading St. Mary Meade?

Any other suggestions?

1 comment:

  1. I can't believe someone is already doing a Steampunk cozy--I was going to crack a joke about that...

    Hmmm, will have to keep thinking.

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