Speaking for myself, my definition of "contemporary fantasy" is close to yours, and I like it just fine as a description of the Carousel books. Which probably means I'm not the person to give you useful answers.
(I sometimes think etymology is not a friend when it comes to understanding marketing categories; to say a book is "contemporary fantasy" is to say that it significantly resembles other books that have been said to be contemporary fantasy, regardless of the actual meanings of the words. Mike Ford's The Last Hot Time has "A Contemporary Fantasy" printed on the front cover. "Fantasy" is undeniable, what with the elves and things; "urban fantasy" would be understandable, given that it's set in Chicago. "Contemporary fantasy", now... it's set an unspecified but not insignificant number of years in the future, with a backstory that, allowing for it being elves and not space aliens, would be familiar to many a science fiction fan. But elves it is, and there's something about the whole thing that would be comfortingly familiar to a reader of contemporary fantasy, so "A Contemporary Fantasy" it is.)
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mmmag
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Date: 2014-02-07 05:38 pm (UTC)(I sometimes think etymology is not a friend when it comes to understanding marketing categories; to say a book is "contemporary fantasy" is to say that it significantly resembles other books that have been said to be contemporary fantasy, regardless of the actual meanings of the words. Mike Ford's The Last Hot Time has "A Contemporary Fantasy" printed on the front cover. "Fantasy" is undeniable, what with the elves and things; "urban fantasy" would be understandable, given that it's set in Chicago. "Contemporary fantasy", now... it's set an unspecified but not insignificant number of years in the future, with a backstory that, allowing for it being elves and not space aliens, would be familiar to many a science fiction fan. But elves it is, and there's something about the whole thing that would be comfortingly familiar to a reader of contemporary fantasy, so "A Contemporary Fantasy" it is.)