Thanks for the advice. unionrdr is right on. I made the mistake of coming up with what I thought would be good recipes and buying the ingredients before checking to see if the recipes made sense. No crazy spices, sugars, etc. Just that the mix of DME, LME, steeping grains, hops, and yeast that I had planned did not fit within the criteria. Some were close (e.g., the expected OG is within .005 or the color is slightly out of range), but I went ahead and tweaked the recipes to bring them into the accepted ranges.
Funny thing is that I had already made a batch with my own recipe that fit within a normal style without realizing it. I was so excited that I literally went to my LHBS to get stuff the same day I had made my first batch (a kit), got stuff on the fly, and made a batch without even thinking that I should look for a recipe (DOH!). According to the recipe calculator website I used after the fact, it fits squarely as a Special Bitter (almost middle on all the categories). Dumb luck! We will see how it ends up.