galadhir

So, I've started brainstorming a cozy fantasy and am discovering that I have many questions about the genre. Chiefly worldbuilding. So far all the cozy fantasies I've read (a grand total of two of them) seem to be set in generic Dungeons and Dragons world.

I wonder if a lot of the appeal is in the safety and familiarity of that setting. Do you think it matters if I try to do something vaguely inspired by Ancient Babylon?

Knowing myself, I know that I am going to want to know where they get their water from, how they cook, who makes the laws and how they're enforced, what the basic theology is, why exactly the 'evil' forces are evil etc. And I will want that to be something other than standard D&D, because that's half the fun of fantasy.

Do you think a slightly more intricate focus on worldbuilding will turn the end product into something that isn't cozy enough?

I will want a little bit of peril, but I think I can keep that down to the level set in Legends and Lattes, the touchstone of cozy.

But I'm also not planning on including a romance. I had enough romance writing in the ten years of writing m/m, and that part of my writing soul is still recoiling in dread when I think about going back. (I hope to go back eventually but I'm so not there yet.)

Is it possible to be 'cozy' while just concentrating on one woman's failing out of wizard school and finding a new career in a fantasy hot country very loosely based on ancient Babylon?

My narrowboat novel has a similar issue of being one woman's rediscovery of herself while on a river journey and resolutely refusing to be in a romance (even though one is offered.)

These are, I think, the fruits of romance burnout, but they certainly don't make either book more typical of their kind.