On Cozy Fantasy

Hello! My name is Holly and I write under the pen name HL Bernabe. Sue so sweetly asked me to do a guest blog for her and I couldn’t say no. She is a wonderfully supportive person, and I’m grateful to know her and call her a friend.

While I have written things in several genres, typically I write fantasy. I have an epic fantasy series I’ve been working on since 2020. Epic fantasy is… epic. And time consuming. I’ve written three out of the four books in the series, and currently I’m in editing and rewriting mode for the first book.

While working on all of that, I wrote and published a prequel novella for the series. By Her Grace: A Dell Chronicles Novella turned out to be a cozy fantasy story. I really enjoyed writing it, and I’ve found since then that I really enjoy writing cozy fantasy in general. I’ve written several short stories, and I started a stand-alone cozy fantasy novel during the last NaNoWriMo.

Before last year, I didn’t even know that cozy fantasy existed as a sub-genre. But I read TJ Klune and Travis Baldree’s books, and I’ve been hooked on sweet books like that ever since. In Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes, Viv faces the prospect of losing the coffee shop that she worked so hard to build. In TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door, Wallace is a ghost who refuses to cross over. He and his ferryman falling in love complicates everything. My novella, By Her Grace, has a young halfling take in a pregnant human woman on the run from a murderous psycho and she tries to hide her from him to keep her safe. The story is about friendship and following one’s dreams.

So, what exactly is cozy fantasy? It’s not just a book you want to cozy up next to a fire with a nice cup of hot cocoa with. If that were the case, any book could be a cozy book! No, cozy fantasy specifically deals with small stakes. There is no quest, no saving the kingdom, no saving the world. Cozy fantasy is primarily about the relationships between people and their community. Don’t get me wrong—a cozy fantasy book can still deal with horrible things, and very real danger. But it is a personal danger. Yes, the characters can die, or lose their homes, or their families. But that is the extent of it. It isn’t a danger where if they fail, the whole world will fall into darkness.

Because cozy fantasies are character driven, the characters generally are rich and well-developed. You feel like you know them. They’re friends. You want them to succeed.

I tend to avoid reading dark fantasy or grimdark books. I think it’s because there are enough nasty things going on in the world that when I read, I want to escape into a happier place.  A place where love and kindness are triumphant. It’s no wonder I enjoy writing cozy fantasy, since those values, along with compassion and empathy, are important to me and are major themes in my work.

If you would like to learn more about me or my writing, you can check out my website at https://hlbernabe.com/author and sign up for my newsletter there. Happy spring!

Holly is a geeky oddball who shares her dinky apartment in Central Oregon with three kids--two of the fuzzy feline persuasion and the third a hilarious booze peddler who makes fabulous margaritas.