Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt is a “nonfiction novel” published in 1994 that focuses on an infamous murder trial that happened in Savannah, Georgia in the 1980s. The book spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and was adapted into a Clint Eastwood movie a few years after publication. Here, editor Diane Callahan and author Hero Bowen compare the book and movie, and talk about how it inspired their urban fantasy project Wish Hunter, which is set in Savannah.
For writers, it can be hard to have a truly “original” idea in any genre of fiction, but it’s especially difficult in a popular genre like urban fantasy where all the best ideas have already been taken. The powerhouses in urban fantasy—Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, and Jim Butcher—have paved the way. In this video, editor Diane Callahan and author Hero Bowen discuss what qualities they like (and dislike) in urban fantasy and how other writers can approach being inventive in this genre.