Is it Saturday already? It seems like the week just started and it’s over already. Well, I’m happy the weekend is here. My older son has a birthday party tomorrow for one of his school friends at the local bowling alley. Then he has no school all week, mid-winter break. That will be fun to have him home but I will need to do things to keep him busy or he and his brother will drive me crazy. Kids will be kids and both of them instigate one another. I have some great things in mind so I’m looking forward to having a fun week with both boys.  Speaking of the younger one, potty training was going well yesterday, until he peed on the floor three times within 40 minutes. But hey, he told me when he was doing it…progress.

 

Well, enough about my kids, I start talking about them and I might never stop…that’s me as a mom for you. My kids are my life, my everything. Let’s get to discussing this amazing author I am featuring today.

 

Thank you for coming to Saturday Spotlight to learn about and support a new author! I appreciate it and I know for sure they do. There are so many authors that are left out of the spotlight so this is my way of helping them to become recognized. I want to continue to help introduce you to new authors each week. If you are an author who would like to be featured please, feel free to contact me using the form below at the end of this post.

 

If you are a reader or book blogger, please take the time to check out each author of the week and their book(s). Even requesting it from your local library helps them! They appreciate the smallest amount of support for the incredible amount of time they put into their books. Authors give us more than printed pages, they give us experiences, friends, and amazing adventures. The least we can do is show our support by writing a review for their books we read or borrow/buy their book(s).

 

Today, I have Elliott Dunstan bringing us a fantastic guest post! I am really excited for you all to read it.

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Elliott Dunstan

 

 

 

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Hi everyone! My name’s Elliott and I’m happy to be doing a guest blog post for today. I’m a queer urban fantasy and magical realism author, as well as a poet, editor, and publisher. Currently, I’m working on a novel as well as updating a monthly fantasy serial, Ghosts in Quicksilver.

 

              But enough about that. Today, I’m going to be talking about fantasy tropes; in particular, the urban fantasy trope of the masquerade. A masquerade ball is a dance where everybody is wearing masks to hide their identity; a masquerade setting is one where the magic or fantasy of the setting is hidden or concealed from the ‘mundane’ world.

 

Put that way, you might realize this is a pretty common trope. Harry Potter, Twilight, Mortal Instruments, Charles de Lint’s Newford series, Rivers of London, Neverwhere – they all function on this trope, with small changes in the formula here and there. Boiled down, though, the arc usually follows similar story beats. A mundane outsider discovers, usually by accident, some facet of the existence of the Magical World. The outsider is either dragged or dives quite excitedly into the new world they have discovered; often, they find that they either prefer it to the mundane world or that they belong in the magical world by some accident of birth. Unlike portal fantasies (in which the mundane traveler visits an entirely different world, dimension, or universe) the traveler usually remains in contact or part of the magical setting. Their eyes have been opened – there’s no reason to close them again.

 

Of course, this trope shows up in science fiction and horror as well; however, in urban fantasy, the concept of the ‘masquerade’ is so integral to the genre that many writers don’t even know that there is a separate name for it. It’s rarer to find an urban fantasy that doesn’t use this trope. (Lilith Saintcrow’s Dante Valentine series is an excellent example; the Masquerade used to exist but has long since been broken.)

 

    It’s an excellent trope – tropes are not bad in and of themselves. But all tropes carry unspoken baggage with them, and the Masquerade is no exception.

 

I think the main thing I’ve always found fascinating in masquerade settings is how Rules are treated. In shows like Charmed and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer there’s an older, experienced person to show the way, and not-so-subtly drop the premise onto the unsuspecting main characters’ heads. In Hellboy, in much the same way, poor John Myers wanders into the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense and has the ‘rules’ explained to him as he goes.

 

The term ‘rules’ here doesn’t necessarily mean anything as hidebound as ‘don’t feed the gremlins after midnight’ (although that certainly counts). The rules of a setting are simply what can and cannot happen, redefined for a world with magic. In Harry Potter, the whole first half of the first book is dedicated to setting up these rules; the houses of Hogwarts, the nature of wands, the fact that Harry is unusual and likely one of a kind and the existence of things like shapeshifting wizards and flying motorcycles.

 

One of the most frustrating concepts in urban fantasy, though, is the idea that everybody in a subculture knows the rules exactly except for the unwitting protagonist. It’s true that an American visiting Britain for the first time will break probably ten unwritten rules within an hour of being in London. However, it’s equally true that if you ask ten self-identified goths whether the subculture started with Black Sabbath or Siouxsie and the Banshees, you’ll get ten different answers. Somehow.

 

I would love to see more urban fantasy where these arguments come up. Not ones that have to do with saving the world, or political infighting; just inconsequential disagreements about how the fabric of their personal universe works. Do faeries have different recipes for their favorite spells and get into online arguments about which one is the “real” one? Are there constant arguments between vampires on whether or not they can subsist off of blood replacement products? Is there Quora for witches with horrible, horrible misinformation on it?

 

The same thing applies to the idea of circles, groups, etc. Everybody seems to know everybody in urban fantasy settings; but what are the sub-sub-cultures? In queer communities, there are subgroups, many of whom dislike each other more than straight people can wrap their heads around; “metalheads” go head to head over whether power metal is Real Metal; the anarchist left on Twitter has so many conflicting opinions on Marx and Lenin that one wonders why they’re even relevant anymore. What does this look like in your urban fantasy setting? This type of detail gives your universe a lot of depth.

 

In Ghosts in Quicksilver and the Alkimia verse in general, I’ve tried to approach things in this way. The Alkimia verse has rules, absolutely; but no one group of people really has all the answers, and when they do, it’s after a lot of research and a lot of discussion, and it’s only ever the practical Rules of Magic as opposed to any of the social implications.

 

Ghosts in Quicksilver is free to read online HERE, and for more information about the Alkimia verse in general, including how to participate, check out the WordPress page HERE!

 

 

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Wow, wasn’t that a fantastic post? I would also love to see those smaller disagreements within an unseen subculture, especially in fantasy novels. I would love to see more realistic subcultures within a culture. Thank you so much, Elliott, for writing that for us! Be sure to check out Elliott’s novel online!! What do you have to lose? It is free online, you have nothing to lose so go and check it out.