Southern Discomfort, intrusion fantasy and more comps

Copy-editing another stretch of Southern Discomfort it struck me the magic comes off quite strange, which is what I wanted.

As I’ve written before, the book is in many ways closer to an intrusion fantasy than urban fantasy. Urban fantasy assumes the world we see is not reality: magic is common, even if most people don’t know it, a subculture existing just beyond mundane awareness. Intrusion fantasy assumes the world of the story is our world: magic isn’t normally real but once in a while something supernatural intrudes into it. In Southern Discomfort all the magic except Maria’s second sight (she’s the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) stems from having two elves living in Pharisee County, Georgia. At one point Maria asks why she’s never seen anything magical elsewhere; Olwen replies that maybe the rest of the magic has vanished, as the other sidhe did (she admits she doesn’t know for certain).

While I have multiple POV characters, the three most important are FBI Agent Rachel Cohen, local waitress Joan Slattery and Maria. Joan knows there’s magic in Pharisee; Cohen and Maria have no clue. The Pharisee residents just accept how things work — that cold iron can kill elves, that the spell called “the stray sod” can be broken if you turn your shirt or coat inside out. So does Olwen, so Maria and Cohen asking questions doesn’t get much result. Elves aren’t into scientific thinking or curiosity: “because that’s how it works” is a perfectly adequate explanation from their perspective.

The end result is that I present a lot of magic without explanation. Maria takes a shower at Olwen’s house, comes out and finds her clothes and backpack are not only cleaned and ironed, all the holes have been patched — and she couldn’t have been in the shower more than 20 minutes. It’s meant to evoke the way brownies used to keep human homes clean, but there are no brownies in town and there’s never an explanation. I think everything is consistent and it works dramatically but there’s nothing like a magic system.

Is that a good thing? I think so; I hope readers do too.

Now, as to my ongoing effort to find “comps” I can compare my book to in promoting it:

TITHE: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black centers on sixteen-year-old Kaye, daughter of a rock vocalist mother whose floundering career has her dragging Kaye across the country as Mom hooks up with different bands and different men. After Mom’s last boyfriend literally tries to stab her in the back, they head back home to Kaye’s grandma’s house in the town Kaye grew up in. Kaye connects with her childhood friends including the supposedly imaginary fairies she hung out with She also saves the life of an elven knight, pledged to serve the Unseelie Court (Seelie faeries can be cruel; Unseelies prefer to be), but her friends warn her to stay away from him.

Like the protagonist of War for the Oaks  (my friend Kat Traylor recommended Tithe as the same premise done better), Kaye’s caught in a clash between the courts. Only it’s different for her: as the knight Roibin explains, she’s a pixie, traded as a changeling for the real Kaye years ago. She’s been chosen as a sacrifice by the Unseelie queen, who assumes she’s a human. At the moment of sacrifice her friends plan to expose the truth, thereby discrediting the queen for sacrificing one of her own kind. That will leave the Solitary, the unaligned fae, free of either court for seven years.

I really enjoyed this one. The faerie, even the nominally decent ones, are coldblooded about exploiting humans or even one of their own kind. The magic is mostly dark and creepy. Would it work as a comp (“If you like Holly Black’s Tithe, you’ll love Southern Discomfort!“)? I’ve no idea. While I can see a lot of overlap, there are plenty of differences too; is it so different that I’d annoy readers? Supposedly comparing yourself to “name” authors is a bad strategy though most of the ads I see ignore that.

Reading this may also be helpful for Let No Man Put Asunder in terms of some of Black’s seedy, grimy settings.

THE DEVIL MAKES THREE by Lucy Blue definitely won’t work (which is not a reflection on the quality of course): it’s a Stephen King-influenced horror novel (I’m assuming the influence because Lucy talks on social media about how much she loves King’s work) about a novelist who apparently graduated from the Jack Torrance School Of Picking Writing Retreats. For reasons he can’t explain, he plans to write in an infamous Southern haunted house, a decision that entangles him with the area’s modern-day racism and the house’s supernatural history. Not right for a comp.

Neither is WILD HUNGER: An Heirs of Chicagoland Novel by Chloe Neill. A sequel to Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series, it stars Elisa, born to two of the city’s vampires due to a powerful magic (vampires are normally sterile so Elisa’s unique) that’s also infected Elisa with a demonic side that emerges under stress. Elisa’s part of the security for an international vampire conference which puts her on the spot when the fae get up to no good and the body count begins to ratchet up.

I picked this one up on impulse after reading a How To writing article by Neill so I didn’t anticipate it being a good comp — big city vampires vs. small-town elves? — and I was right. I do think it’s interesting how much time Neill spends discussing backstory, vampire politics and various personal relationships rather than advancing the plot. Not that this is unique — lots of urban fantasy does that — but it encourages me to think readers might be okay with all the time I take discussing Pharisee’s history and the political issues. Maybe not — Neill obviously had a solid fanbase before she released this one — but I can hope.

I’m also thinking about name-dropping Crossroads of Bones and Bless Your Heart which I read in 2022 and 2021 respectively (the first is the more likely pick). Maybe coming up with some comps isn’t as hopeless as I thought.

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