Shanna Swendson is a fantasy author based in Texas, and writes the popular Katie Chandler "Hex and the City" series which begins with Enchanted, Inc.. She also has a line of romance books from Harlequin under the name Samantha Carter. She has also contributed essays to several pop culture collections including Serenity Found (Firefly/Serenity) and So Say We All (Battlestar Galactica). You can find her online at ShannaSwendson.com and at her frequently updated LiveJournal.

Please share your perceptions of F/SF from when you first entered the publishing industry vs. the present state of things. If you haven't noticed any major changes since your first work was published, could you touch on whether or not your perceptions of the genre(s) changed once you went from a genre fan to a contributor?

The "urban fantasy" phenomenon is something that didn't seem to be around when I first started dealing with the publishing industry. Back then, it seemed like almost all fantasy was in a quasi-medieval setting. If there were contemporary elements, it was someone from the "real" world entering the fantasy world. It also seemed to be more of a male-dominated field. I remember getting a promotional kit from a major fantasy publisher in the late 90s, bragging about their list of female authors, like this was a new and exciting thing. I know there were some big-name female fantasy authors from the 70s and 80s (because I was reading them), but there still seemed to be this attitude in the publishing world that the primary fantasy reader was a young man. Now urban fantasy, set largely in our "real" world but with fantasy elements inserted, is fairly dominant, and that subgenre is very female-dominated, with very blurry lines between it and paranormal romance. I'm even hearing that publishers aren't all that interested in epic fantasy right now, and that used to be the bread-and-butter of the genre.

Who or what is missing, saturated, or underrepresented in F/SF today?

I wonder if the vampire-hero/heroine and demon-slayer type urban fantasies might have started to reach a saturation point. When I go to conventions, there's a lot of snarking about the generic urban fantasy book covers -- the tough-looking chick in black leather with tattoos, and her back turned while she holds some kind of weapon (I must admit, that was my Halloween costume last year). Then again, these books still seem to be selling, but we may have reached the point where the existing established authors may continue to do well, but they'll be looking for something different from new authors.

This may just be my personal taste as a reader, but I feel like the lighter side of fantasy is woefully underrepresented. Everything seems so dark and gritty right now, with horror elements dominating. There may be snarky humor woven into the darker stories, but there's not a lot of fantasy, particularly in urban fantasy, with a sense of optimism and hope. It does also seem like more traditional fantasy elements like magic and wizards are currently being overshadowed by the horror elements, like vampires, demons and werewolves. Comedy seems to be what's doing best at the box office right now (that tends to be the case in bad economic times), so I wonder if we'll see the pendulum swing in publishing.

What are your favorite F/SF resources (books, websites, people)?

My readers are probably my biggest resource for book recommendations. Whenever I post to my blog that I'm looking for something to read, I'll get a bunch of suggestions. I suppose that makes sense, since if they like my books, that probably means we have similar tastes. I've actually been looking for additional ways to find out about new fantasy books because when it comes time to make nominations for the Nebula Awards or other things like that, I never seem to know what's out there. I feel almost illiterate in my own genre, no matter how much I read.

Enchanted, Inc. and the other books in the series walk a fine line between traditional Fantasy and more mainstream Chick Lit. Has the mix of genres helped or hurt your ability to market the books? Do you enjoy reading stories that blur genre lines?

Straddling that genre line has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I think I've picked up readers on both sides. On the other, I'm afraid we went with the wrong side of the line for marketing the books. Back when that first book in the series went out to publishers, chick lit was the hottest genre in the market, and they were looking for new and different approaches to the genre. Meanwhile, urban fantasy wasn't really a market force. There were a few authors writing books that brought fantasy elements to contemporary settings, but it wasn't yet a defined subgenre, and it definitely wasn't one of the hottest things on the market. It seemed obvious that since my book had a young female narrator and a light, humorous tone, it would be best to call it chick lit. And then by the time Enchanted, Inc. was published, the chick lit genre had started to tank while urban fantasy was becoming a market force. I think that had a lot to do with the publisher's lack of interest in completing the series. They weren't interested in more chick lit books. However, the books have really taken off with fantasy readers. The booksellers at science fiction/fantasy conventions sell a lot of copies, and my sales at Amazon, where they are classified as urban fantasy instead of as chick lit, are an unusually high percentage of total sales. Unfortunately, you usually can't change genres in the middle of a series.

While I was a fan of chick lit, I always really thought of my books as fantasy that happened to have some elements of chick lit rather than as something that crossed genre lines. It just happened to be urban fantasy that was about the hopeful side of the city, where people can go to expand their horizons and find themselves. The first book reads like a chick lit novel that has magic in it, but I've moved further and further away from that as the series has progressed, and I think that mostly has to do with the fact that the heroine is a young, modern woman and therefore is going to have a lot of the same issues as a chick lit heroine, no matter how much magic there is.

As a reader, I do like books with a variety of elements, but I don't know if I'd say they crossed genres. Have you really crossed genre lines if you happen to have a love story or a mystery that must be solved in a fantasy novel?

Has the mainstreaming of the internet changed your approach to promoting your work and connecting with fans? What changes, if any, have you seen in the publishing industry due to widespread internet usage?

The biggest change is not having to print and mail manuscripts! Now I just have to e-mail the manuscript. As for promotion, the Internet has made it possible to interact with fans in a way that was nearly impossible before. I had a few books published before the Internet became mainstream, and I didn't even bother with a web site then. Most promotional opportunities were prohibitively expensive. Now, though, you can get messages to readers and potential readers for next to nothing. Of course, every other author is doing the same thing, so that means there's a lot of noise out there, and the publishers now seem to expect more publicity activity from authors. They've outsourced that function to the authors, to a large extent. And that takes time away from writing. I guess you could say it's a mixed bag, but I think there are more benefits than drawbacks. I certainly would have missed out on a lot of good books if I hadn't been able to interact with my readers.

(Author photo by Julian Noel, used with permission)