Good times

Well, this is great! Someone else than me or my husband has read this blog! I am so excited :)

Welcome to you Mr. Chris Warren and thank you for commenting my latest posting. At first i wanted to answer to your message via commenting myself but then i thought what the heck!? Let's do this by rolling out the red carpet with you as my guest of honour :)

As for your comment: maybe i should have mentioned that the classifications of fantasy genres i came across were the ones i discovered in the local book store. This is a town of aboout 9000 inhabitants. This store is located in bavaria, germany which in general is not known for its explicit knowledge of fantasy, sci-fi or anything else other than the books currently on the bestselling listings. Fortunately at the moment we have some german writers like Cornelia Funke or Markus Heintz having brought fantasy to our national attention. So i am glad to having found a small representation of fantasy at all.

But what about the classification within the family of fantasy. I have to say i found myself to be rather amused by the category of women's fantasy. I don't see that classification as a threat or damaging to the genre, quite the opposite. If it has arrived in our humble rural minds, it really has grown into a generally accepted form of written entertainment in the last years. And what an impact that is! Not only for comic-geeks - even girls are allowed to enjoy it! There's a remarkable cultural shift taking place and i am glad being a part of it.

I am however torn and maybe a little worried about the fantasy books recommended as"children/adolescent" fantasy. When i was a teen the fantasy books that were recommended for my age group were the ones that adults didn't care for. I was confronted with a lot of d-list fantasy but i didn't know it. It took many years until i discovered how much fantasy has to offer for me and how good and truly satisfying it can be. I can say from my experience i felt discouraged to explore it further and that's a pity - well, but who knows, maybe i wasn't ready for the real thing anyway. :)

There's always prejudice in categorisation, but i have to say over all i'm optimistic about the fact that these are just labels, changing in and through time. Nothing to be offended about, nothing to be kept away by in the long term. Someone who is really interested in the genre will look for further information anyway. Maybe the comparison to title of story and story is adequate: in my opinion a bad choice of title doesn't ruin a book that is well-written. Only a bad written story can do the trick. So i'll only have to write a good story then! Piece of cake ;)