Instructor: Beth Daniels
Start Date: Monday, July 7, 2025
End Date: Friday, August 1, 2025
Type:  Group.io
Duration: 4 Weeks
USD Fee: FF&P Member – $20; Non-Member – $25

In the World of Fantasy fiction, there is one segment that so often falls by the wayside, pushed out of the way by urban fantasy, the alternative history categories of Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Atomicpunk, and all the other punk fields, rewritten fairytales, and paranormal romantic adventure. The smushed against the back wall genre niche is Gaslamp Fantasy.

While the genre has been around since the early 1800s, the term Gaslamp Fantasy was only coined in 2020, yet it plays out usually in the 19th century using elements that fascinated the public—well, the public that could read and afford to either purchase books or afford to join a subscription to a lending library. It was the era of seances, of ghost stories, of horrific events within what were termed “fairytales” though fairies weren’t necessary present in the stories. And horror was that delicious added treat, or so it seems.

Gaslamp Fantasy is a mix of things that sometimes appear in books labelled as paranormal, but they have far more in common with Mrs. Ann Radcliff’s gothic tales and Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of pits, pendulums, and other tales of what may seem relatively mild horror today but frightening all the same. Victorians who feared being buried alive by mistake insisted on having a bell system atop the coffin so that, should they wake inside, there was a cord to pull to alert the mourners. And then there are the folks who got walled up behind the mortar in the family home! Yikes!

What “modern” Gaslamp Fantasy does is toss the horrors of fairytales such as the Grimm brothers collected (and published in the period) with the fascination with fairies that even Arthur Conon Doyle believed in for a while. He firmly believed that the dead could contact the living though the services of a medium, despite his friend Harry Houdini debunking one medium after another. Magic is another element stirred into this stew, though not Houdini’s style…however, it could be. Consider events in the 2006 movie, The Prestige.

But my favorite Gaslamp Fantasy story, be it the book or the television series, is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Fairies, magic, travel through mirrors or mirror like surfaces, insanity, and bringing the dead back to life, though not always managing to rekill those who are zombies. Magic is such a tricky business.

So let’s pile into the carriage in our best Georgian and Victorian wear, and seek out the mysteries—and a cast, plot and just the right mix—to spin a Gaslamp Fantasy tale of our own!

About the Instructor:

Beth Daniels currently writes standalone historical romantic suspense but also pens urban fantasy/mystery/comedy series as J.B. Dane and is completing a Weird West Steampunk trilogy as Nied Darnell. When she dived into writing sagas that continued past a single title, she felt for a bit like she’d stepped into quicksand. Fortunately, there was solid footing (her 29 previously published standalone books—though she’s up to 39 now with 40 out the Fall of 2025) to keep her head above the muck as she worked out what needed to be done a bit differently with a series. Now with her urban fantasy series poised to be five books into a six-book set plus numerous prequel novellas running ahead of the novels, and an Indied paranormal lite romantic mystery comedy four-book set launched back in 2021, she’s become a firm believer in tied together title runs.

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