the secret shop

[marycatelli]

Thought of another justification for the masquerade, why magic lurks among us but we don't know it -- so that urban fantasy can take place in a world that is not alternate.

Probably the oldest of them.   Long before even Charles de Lint there was slick fantasy -- that is, fantasy published in slick magazines, as opposed to the types published in the pulps.  Whereas the pulps were creating sword and sorcery, the slick magazines would have things like the deal with a devil, or the three wishes, or a little shop that wasn't there yesterday in the modern world.

And why was it secret?  Was some invisible force compelling them to keep it secret for mysterious reasons?

Hard to tell.  Because in those tales, the characters in the masquerade who actually appeared did nto reveal their motives.  Might have been forced, might have been free, and for any number of motives.  They weren't talking.

Restricts what tales you can tell, but what justification doesn't?

Comments

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

In the more horror-ish such stories, pretending that it's a normal (albeit little-known and/or seldom open) shop could be part of the proprietor's strategy for luring potential victims. At least, this appears likely to be the motive behind the set-up in the upcoming book "The Motion of Puppets," by Keith Donohue, which I saw a bound galley of at work. This is about a mysterious never-open toy shop in Quebec that heroine Kay Harper is attracted to because of a puppet in the window. When the shop conveniently turns out to be open one night when she's hurrying home, fearing that she's being followed by a stalker, she takes refuge inside--and apparently vanishes off the face of the Earth.

[marycatelli]

The stories where the proprietor does not reveal his motives -- tend toward the darker side.