Cozy default
Wonder without the world ending — belonging is the real magic.
Pipeline
How we write Fantasy
Epic subgenre
World-scale stakes resolved through the story's own systems, with earned cost.
Urban subgenre
A recognizable city plus a hidden system the protagonist works.
Gaslamp subgenre
Period order plus uncanny invention when you pick Gaslamp / Steampunk.
The contract
What readers expect
Reader promise
- A protagonist between worlds who needs a place — or a job in both
- Magic that is a gift, a weapon, a municipal problem, or an impossible machine
- A community, a kingdom, a hidden Chicago, or a long nineteenth century
- Stakes you can hold: a garden, a throne, a debt, a discovery
Engine enforcement
- cozy_fantasy default — intimate wonder
- epic_fantasy — world-scale reckoning
- urban_fantasy — two-worlds competence
- gaslamp_adventure — competent agency, uncanny invention
From the manuscript
Sample prose
Heirloom of the Ironwood Grove · Chapter 1
The repotting had been going well until the lavender decided to have opinions.
Rowan had her hands deep in a fresh clay pot, working a sprig of rosemary into position — fingers spreading the roots apart with the patient pressure she'd learned from years of kitchen-garden work. The rosemary accepted this without complaint. Most of the herbs did.
She reached past it to collect the trowel from the worktable's far edge, and the whole plant — every stem, every spent flower head — turned toward her hand. Not a draft. The window was latched. Rowan held very still.
Her thumb pressed the surface flat, and the resinous smell that lifted had nothing sweet about it — the kind that cleared the back of the throat and made the eyes water slightly if you breathed it too close.
Write your fantasy
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Pick Cozy, Epic, Urban, or Gaslamp in The Composer — one Genre, four different reader contracts.
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