MGOC Series on Fantasy - Anne Harris

We have another guest blog from a contributor to Many Genres, One Craft! This time it's Anne Harris. If you would like to know more about the author and Many Genres, One Craft, please scroll down to the bottom of the post. After this week, we will be taking a brief break from the series, but I assure you, there will be more!


Fantasy Then and Now by Anne Harris

Two older Fantasy novels which impacted you:

Tolkien's The Return of the King saved my life in junior high school. It didn't stop a bullet from entering my heart, but close.

Freedom and Necessity by Emma Bull and Steven Brust is a wonderful epistolary fantasy novel which woke me up to my love of romance and helped me zero in on what matters to me most as an author.

Two newer Fantasy novels which have impacted you:

I recently read Sunshine by Robin McKinley and absolutely adored it. And I'm not a big vampire fan, but this book was written in such a way that I was captivated first by the protagonist, and I had no choice but to go along for the ride.

Wicked Gentlemen is another recent fave. It's a fantasy because it has demons in it, but the way author Ginn Hale constructs a Victorian-era society informed by all the denizens of Hell converting to Christianity felt science fictional in the way that she uses that event as a point of extrapolation for her story.

Your Fantasy story:

I don't have any fantasy novels but my (2005) Nebula nominated short story, "Still Life with Boobs" was definitely fantasy. That was a story in which keeping the fantastic element mysterious and unexplained was crucial. It allowed the focus of the work to remain on the main character's personal struggle. If I'd done it as science fiction, it would have been a different story, probably one with a broader focus on the overall cultural impact of the phenomenon.


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About the Author

Award-winning author Anne Harris writes young adult science fiction under the name Pearl North and gay romance as Jessica Freely. She also mentors students in Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction MFA program. Anne blogs at http://friskbiskit.com. She's also on Facebook and Twitter.


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About Many Genres, One Craft

Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction (Headline Books, 2011)is an amazing anthology of instructional articles for fiction writers looking for advice on how to improve their writing and better navigate the mass market for genre novels.

MGOC is available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble!





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NEXT UP: A Step Back - Examining my year so far and the year ahead.