Mar
2015

Horror with Humor

categories: Featured Blend

Are you watching iZombie?  The new show about a girl infected with a zombie virus who works in a morgue and solves crime? On the CW on Tuesday nights?  Well you should be.  It’s one of the most promsiing combinations of witty, banter-y humor and horror that I’ve seen in a while.

It also made me realize that while I’m a fan of horror in general I really love horror that knows how to laugh at itself.  Because I’m more sensitive to visual scares than written ones, I actually refused to watch any horror movies until Evil Dead came along. There’s something so cathartic about laughing in the middle of something terrifying. While there are a lot of horror (novels and films both) with moments of unexpected humor, I’m talking here about laugh-out-loud funny stuff, rather than the dark-as-night black humor of something like Bret Easton Ellis.  Some of my favorites are genuinely scary horror with comic relief, some are more comedies that adopt horror scenery, but they all combine that desire to bring you to an uncomfortable place through a scary or gross set-up and then make you laugh. This kind of push-pull of maintaining tension and then releasing it through humor is actually incredibly impressive, so if you like to laugh-scream, here are some picks for you. (more…)


Mar
2015

Planetary Romance

categories: Featured Blend

Some of my earliest and longest-lasting love affairs in SFF is the subgenre of planetary romance. It seems strangely old-fashion now, but when I first started reading science fiction, these were the books I read, loved and wallowed in. So what is a planetary romance? Contrary to what you might think, it is not actually a blend between romance and science fiction (although it can be that too).  If anything, it’s more of a blend between science fiction and fantasy.   (more…)


Mar
2015

Historical Policing

categories: Featured Blend

I’ve always been a fan of historical mysteries, but a couple of years ago i read a couple of really great books set at the dawn of “official” policing (Gods of Gotham, about the founding of the NYPD and The Yard about the first “murder squad” at Scotland Yard) and wondered if there was more out there.  They appealed to me because in general I like the structure imposed by a police procedural. (more…)


Mar
2015

Genre Blend New Releases – March 2015

categories: New Releases

We’re heading into spring soon, one of busier times in the publishing year. Plus March is one of those lucky months for new book lovers that has FIVE Tuesdays! Why do new books come out on Tuesday anyway? I’ve scoured sites for forthcoming books and pulled together the titles that look like they combine genres to bring you another genre blend new releases list. As always, I have tried to list the genres in the order os seeming importance to the story.  For example, HISTORICAL/ROMANCE would be a mostly historical fiction novel with a romance, but ROMANCE/HISTORICAL is a romance novel with a historical setting.  Make sense? Let’s round up March’s new blends!

                 

March 3

   

March 10

   

March 17

      

March 24

March 31


Feb
2015

Featured Blend: Time Travel Romance

categories: Featured Blend
Outlander 2014
Time traveler love with seriously smokin’ chemistry. Swoon!

A little late for Valentine’s Day and a little early for the return of the TV series Outlander (although maybe you are, like me, re-watching the first half of season 1 to get prepped!) I have been in the mood to do a romance post about time travel romances and other romances that play with multiple time periods. The reason I think these can be fabulous genre blends is that they can give the reader a hugely satisfying historical fiction experience — gorgeous details of the dress, food, and social norms of the past — but still give us a touchstone character from the present to ground the story. (more…)


Feb
2015

Almost back!

categories: Uncategorized

Jan
2015

Genre Blend New Releases – February 2015

categories: New Releases

The shortest month of the year is not short on new books that combine genres.  Gearing up for the spring publishing season, there are some great new blended titles coming our way in February.  As always, I have tried to list the genres in the order os seeming importance to the story.  For example, HISTORICAL/ROMANCE would be a mostly historical fiction novel with a romance, but ROMANCE/HISTORICAL is a romance novel with a historical setting.  Make sense? Let’s round up February’s new blends!

February 3

February 10

 

February 17

February 24


Jan
2015

Genre Blended Comics

categories: Uncategorized

The blending trend of mixing and matching elements from different genres to tell a story is not limited to novels.  Visual media are often the perfect way to tell a blended story, and while TV and movies get a lot of attention, comic book and graphic novels have been genre-blending for a long time.

The storytelling technique of comics really blends the best of the written and visual worlds, allowing the creators to (literally) illustrate scenes that a novelist can only describe. But you still get to keep some of that imaginative work that happens when you read novels – filling in the details in your head that are only inked on the page with soundtracks and special effects and how the character sounds in your head. It also is a format that allows you to proceed at your own pace, lingering over panels and pages that catch your fancy, whipping through scenes that somehow manage to convey movement and action through pen and ink.

(more…)


Jan
2015

Fantasy Cops

categories: Featured Blend

Urban Fantasy is a genre full of crime.  Not every urban fantasy contains a mystery component, but many, MANY do. When you set your fantasy on regular city streets and remove the epic worldbuilding and plots of large-scale political intrigue and clashing armies (think Tolkien, Martin, etc.) you need something to fill that plot hole.  A mystery plot, with its reliable structure of crime, investigation, and resolution is amazingly suited to a blend with fantasy. It is also a plot that lends itself to episodic series, with gradually accumulated world-building allowed to be used over and over again with the same characters, only changing the particular mystery plot du jour. (more…)