When I first came up with the idea for the book that became Enchanted, Inc., it wasn’t as an idea for something I wanted to write. It was a kind of book I wanted to read. It was near the peak of the “chick lit” craze, and I was loving all the books that were more like romantic comedy films than like traditional romance novels. I’d been on a trip to England, where chick lit started, and I’d come home with stacks of books. After reading a bunch of them, I thought it would be more fun if they had some magic in them.

But I couldn’t find anything like that. None of the chick lit books at the time had fantasy elements. There were a few books of the sort that would later be called urban fantasy (I don’t think that term was in use yet), but they were darker, not rom-coms with magic.

So, I had to write my own book, and the rest is history. Urban fantasy took off, and a lot of it was like chick lit with magical elements. It had the sassy heroines and romantic subplots, but it tended to veer closer to soft horror, with vampires, werewolves, etc. There still wasn’t much like Enchanted, Inc. A few of the urban fantasy books were a little lighter, even with their vampires, and that was as close as I got to comparable titles.

Now, though, the market is full of fantasy romantic comedies. I guess if I’d come up with the idea now, I wouldn’t have had to write the book because I’d have had plenty to read. I seem to have been twenty years ahead of my time because Enchanted, Inc. would fit on the shelves with all these other books.

The latest one I read, A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangdu Mandanna, is one of these. In this book, a young woman was once the most promising student in the magical academy, but while performing a major spell she lost most of her powers and got kicked out of the magical guild. Now she runs an inn with her great aunt. The inn has a kind of magic that brings in the people who need to find it and keeps out those who might be harmful, so it’s collected a quirky bunch of semi-permanent residents. She’s somewhat come to terms with her magic being limited to what she needs to do to keep the place running, but then she learns about a spell that might restore her power. To cast it, though, she may need the help of an archivist who works for the guild. He found the inn, so maybe he belongs there, but he doesn’t really want to get involved. And meanwhile, the powerful head of the guild would prefer that there be no rival who can match his power and possibly shake his control over the magical world.

This book really does fall right down the middle between romance and fantasy. The fantasy plot is strong, not just window dressing for a romance, but the romance is key to the character development. The quirky cast of characters provides the humor. There are some intense parts with a lot of tension, and there are real stakes that go beyond just the lives of the main characters, so it may be more cozy-adjacent, but it still has a lot of the cozy elements

It does seem that publishers still don’t know what to do with books like this. My library had this one shelved in mainstream fiction. I don’t know where bookstores are shelving it. This author has been a bestseller, so maybe they’re better at marketing this sort of thing now than they were in my day. I should do a renewed promo push on Enchanted, Inc., since there seems to be a demand for this kind of book. And maybe I should dip my toe back into the contemporary fantasy rom-com waters while it’s hot. I have the germs of an idea for a situation, though no concrete plot yet.

It looks like the Enchanted, Inc. publisher is thinking along the same lines because they put the book on sale for a special promotion this month. If you haven’t bought the e-book, it’s $1.99.