Magical Realism and Why I Love It

So if you've read Ascension, you have read magical realism in a way. Constance Grady's article out today in Vox Magazine about Gabriel Garcia Marquez defines magical realism as, "a literary genre that’s grounded in reality but in which miraculous and magical things may happen at any moment." So the fact that a whole community of vampires, Deuxsang, and witches live among humans in the real world in real time is absolutely magical realism. 
Now, magical realism, as with all genres, can be done in different ways. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is one of the most influential magical realism writers from Colombia, takes magical realism in a slightly different direction. If he were to have written a vampire novel during his lifetime, the vampires would not have been hidden, as they are in nearly every vampire novel. They would've been part of life as we know it and something fantastical, like them having the ability to will blood out of their victims and travel to them rather than them actually having to dirty their own hands--I imagine that's how he would write his vampires. 
I didn't realize that I was writing magical realism until I got to college and really until a couple years ago. I learned the term and read a Marquez story, and I was discussing it with my publisher when she said, "Well, yeah, that's where your niche is, I think." And after she said that, it was like the world opened up. It's true. While I love reading realistic fiction because there's some amazing work out there right now, I love magic and fantasy even more--but to work it into our world in a way that's completely normal and acceptable is amazing to me. Because if you think about it, the world is magical and full of phenomenons--we just don't always take time to notice them. 
Magical realism is no easy task. As Gabriel Marquez said, "A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.” Some people are hard to convince, but that's not to say we who love magical realism aren't going to try our hardest to convince you that yes it is totally normal that a half-breed vampire school exists under the city of New Orleans so that they could receive higher education safely. (Yes, that is a hint at book 2 for those of you reading closely). 
Here are a few of my favorite magical realism writers and their works: 

• Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell 
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
• The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater *****
• All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater *****
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Find the magic,

     HER