[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I seem to recall the original AB's (Anita Blake, by LKH) as being pretty new and different. Perhaps I missed someone before her--entirely possible--but I "discovered" her with her first AB, as I'd found her with a book prior to that, a fantasy set in some alternative magical world, which I'd hoped she'd continue and never did. I read the first AB (paperback) when it first came out (yowza, bought it at Broders, in person!) and I thought it was pretty fresh, conceptually.

There was Kolchak the Night Stalker (1972) and Marvel Comics' Blade (1973). There's also Shadowrun (though with its science fiction elements, maybe urban fantasy fans don't consider it to be the same).

But there's no doubt that the Anita Blake books are what really started the urban fantasy boom.

I had a book in production, a million years ago, with a part-fae character who worked with a bunch of other fae characters, located in a de-sanctified church. The first Kim Hamilton came out when it was about 75% completed, and the entire novel was tossed. A friend of mine, Tim Hallinan, always says "if you get an idea, write it immediately. There are only so many ideas floating around and if you don't, someone else will."

You could wait and if it becomes an established market then that's good news for you.

I've seen it more than once. Whilst in Hollywood, you see clear plagiarism of concepts/ideas (White House Down, Olympus Has Fallen, as just two examples; we've all seen the others like the Bruce Willis Asteroid movie the same year as the other one, yadda), in books it really DOES seem to happen, that something else, somewhere, promulgates some ideas and then two or more people are both/all independently working on a very similar book at the same time. I don't know how or why, but I've seen it with my own (independent) eyes.

Cases of extremely similar moves aren't always plagiarism. In the '70's, one studio was working on a movie about a high rise on fire adapted from the novel The Tower. Another studio was working on a movie about a high rise on fire based on the book The Glass Inferno. Just a coincidence. In their case, they combined their movies into The Towering Inferno.