It was 1993 when I read my first Urban Fantasy novel and it changed my life. I'd never heard of the the genre before. But I felt like it had been invented for my own particular pleasure. A mixture of mystery and fantasy!!!!
I loved the snarky voice of the heroine, Anita Blake, vampire hunter. I started looking for new UF authors and found them. Nancy Collins and her SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK, Carrie Vaughn and her Kitty Norville books, Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. When I first ventured into longer fiction after writing short stories for about a decade, I went for urban fiction. All the stories in my L.A. Nocturne world are about vampires and werewolves and the humans they interact with in a paranormal "open" city. I love my paranormal Los Angeles, where the largest vampire in the city has taken over my favorite building in the world, the Griffith Park Observatory.
But then I started venturing out and got sidetracked for a while writing sci fi and paranormal fantasy and sweet romance. I love all those stories, but now I want to go back to UF for a while. I'm going to start with Witch and the Hunter, a story set in the Pacific Northwest, which is aplace I love, particularly in Autumn when everything is ablaze with fall color.
I won't quit writing the other books--I'm releasing short, sweet Christmas romances every single day in December--but it'll be nice to return to my first love. You never forget your first.