Last weekend I went to Miami to the 2024 Readers’ Favorite International Awards ceremony where Loy; In the forests of the mind, took home the Gold Medal for Dystopian Fiction. The best part was spending time with other writers and sharing our experiences.
On the flight home I began to think, yet again, about the genre that Loy was cast in. Last year it was awarded the Kindle Book Review’s “Best Indy Sci-fi for 2023”. Sci-fi, Dystopian, Fantasy, are genres within the realm of Speculative Fiction. Each with a slightly different spin. Loy has action-adventure, compelling premises, time shifts, and flights of fancy usually associated with these genres. But there is an underlying element in the book, (and the series), that these categories do not account for.
Magical Realism was something I’d thought about before. It is grounded in the real world and uses fantastical elements to “uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary.” My work is similar, but with an additional step. Beyond uncovering the extraordinary, it strives to delve into the extraordinary. Philosophical. Psychological. Spiritual. Mystical. A hybrid of sorts. Like. Like….
Mystical Realism!
There is no such category, but the more I thought about it, the more satisfying it became. The series straddles several genres, but its truest accounting is embodied in a new one.
Mystical Realism
From Loy: In the forests of the mind
“A leaf from a distance is a leaf. A leaf close up, a universe.” —Land speak
Let me know in the comments section if you think other book titles might fit into this category.
Todd David Gross is the author of the award-winning Loy series. A dystopian fantasy, (now identified by the sub-genre “Mystical Realism”), which explores the nature of man.
In a past life, Todd David Gross had an extensive background in music and was a veteran of such rock groups as The Burning Sensations, The Band Next Door, and The Shout! He performed primarily on bass, sometimes keys, sang, wrote songs, hauled equipment and performed in downtown NYC clubs, (usually after 2 a.m. on a work night), hauled equipment back, and sometimes saw the sun rise.
