Hello, everyone! It has been far too long since my last blog post—but I’m BACK. For real this time.
And from now on—I have a new mission for my website—and my author brand as a whole: I want to help build the friendship-forward corner of speculative fiction.
The stories that fit this brand will be called FRIENDTASIES.
What a FRIENDTASY IS
A friendtasy is a work of speculative fiction where friendship, loyalty, found family, and platonic bonds carry the emotional and plot weight usually given to romance.
Or in other words, a friendtasy is a romantasy’s more platonic sibling.
What a Friendtasy is NOT
- Now to be clear, a friendtasy is not an anti-romance story, although feel free to read and/or write one, if you want. Friendtasies can still contain romance, but it CANNOT be the main driver behind it. That is saved exclusively for friendship.
- It’s also not just speculative fiction with friends. A fantasy with friends means that a hero just has people around him, like every other speculative and non-speculative fiction story. But in friendtasy, friendship HAS TO drive the story. It actively has to change the characters and what they believe.
Why is the “Friendtasy” brand my new author brand mission?
I want to make my mark on the speculative fiction genre. And I figured out that I needed an area of the genre to highlight, celebrate, curate, and create that no one else was covering as much.
Ergo, this friendtasy mission.
I am not trying to claim that friendship in fantasy and other types of speculative fiction is not new, by any means. It’s been always there.
But friendship-DRIVEN fantasy has not been covered nearly as much as the romantasy genre that is so popular on Booktok and Bookstagram and the rest of the publishing world.
And I realized that if I wanted the “friendtasy” brand to go to toe with the “romantasy” brand in terms of popularity, the former needed to have defined language, more visibility, and a place where readers and writers can recognize.
It’s how I want the name to be—not a gimmick, but an useful name for all types of speculative fiction where friendship, loyalty, found family, and found family actually matter in terms of how both the PLOT and the CHARACTERS progress. How the WORLD of the stories progress, even.
Connection is power.
And friendship-driven speculative fiction deserves epic stakes, too.
Welcome to my brand-new beginning. If you want to follow along this journey, don’t forget to subscribe to this website so that you can get notified when a new post drops every Tuesday going forward.
And if you are ever so inclined, drop a comment down below answering this question:
Do you think romantasy is maybe…TOO popular in the publishing world?
Stay tuned for the next post!
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