The Lodestar Contest

Heya, Beholden! It's great to see you here and many thanks for the kind words about the contest. I very much appreciate the question, too. Here are my thoughts:

Short answer: go for it.

I don't have a huge amount of experience with steampunk, but I've read a few novels and quite a few short stories in the genre. My impression is that a lot of steampunk stories can also be categorized as either "fantasy" or "science fiction" by their very nature. As long as your story has a more fantasy "feel" than it does a science fiction one, you're golden, Beholden.

I don't need castles, magic and magical creatures to consider something as fantasy, though I am a fan of that kind of fantasy, along with every other kind I've come across. A "different geography, history and existence" can very well be plenty to fit a story into the fantasy genre.

What sells me on your story being a fit is this sentence: "By my definition, my story will fit quite obviously as a fantasy first."

Boom. Done. To be more wordy about it: as long as you can put "Fantasy" into the first genre choice box with a nod rather than a wince, you're good.

(The prompt I put with "fantasy" was supposed to let writers bend toward steampunk if they wanted, or to keep it strictly fantasy. To my embarrassment, I completely forgot that "steampunk" is its own genre on WdC, in spite of the fact that I have a story in that genre, with "steampunk" in its first genre choice box and everything. )

Chy