Week 6 (back from vacation and playing catch-up...)

Assignment 1:  Street Fiction has been kind of an eye-opener.  I already knew urban fiction is a booming genre, and I was aware of some of the sub-genres (like urban fantasy).  I learned that there's much more overlap between urban Christian fiction and erotica that I would ever have guessed.  The website provides blurbs of decent length about recent releases as well as a link to their bestsellers on Amazon.com; however, they don't say when the item was released, or will be released (if not already).  To me, the most interesting feature was that it seems to be fueled by self-promotion--that is, authors can submit their own works free of charge to be featured on the website.  This explains some of the uneven quality to the book blurbs (and sometimes cover art).

Assignment 2 & 3:  Legal thriller, culinary caper mystery, and literary urban fiction.  John Grisham, Linda Fairstein, and Lisa Scottoline are all well-known writers of legal thrillers.  I believe the appeal of a legal thriller is the detail given to legal proceedings, which may be glossed over elsewhere.  Culinary capers are extremely similar to cozies, in that they lack the grittiness found in other mystery subgenres.  The appeal is the plot and the detail of the protagonist's day job, not the brutality of the crime (which is largely offscreen).  Dianne Mott Davidson and Alexander Campion are two authors to look for here.  Literary urban fiction, such as that written by Sister Souljah and Wahida Clark, are gritty, realistic portrayals of street life.  They are concerned with the issues facing African American characters living in inner city areas, such as drugs and gang violence.

Christian fiction is a fairly pervasive subgenre across the board.  For example, Christian historical fiction, such as anything written by Julie Klassen or Tracie Peterson.  Post-apocalyptic magic realism is another possible genre crossover, like Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death, which is the story of a young woman in post-apocalyptic Africa (in what used to be Sudan) who is born with magical abilities.  Magic is a much greater part of this world than technology, and far more common.