Vladesimus Tangential Thingamajigie

There comes a time in every author's life when someone somewhere is going to say, "Hey! My third cousin six times removed just finished a book. Will you talk to her?" When that happens, if the author in question agrees to the chat, genre is likely to be one of the first points of discussion. Why? Marketing, my friend. You have to know which round hole you intend to pound the square peg of your book into. Only partially kidding on that last bit. If those of us writing intend to sell anything to anyone, we'd better be prepared to describe what we've written. Genre is the generally the broadest description - beyond 'book' - that we're likely going to get away with using. You have to know your genre before you agent shop, before you can query a publishing house or an editor.

I'm not sure what quirk of the brain is exposed by the human impulse to label things, but we, as a species, do seem hung up on parsing, sorting and neatly stacking our piles of stuff. Maybe the whole human genome is a tad OCD. Whatever, we're most comfortable being able to point at a thing and saying, "That's a vladesimus tangential thingamajigie!" And if the human race is a little OCD, the publishing world is far and away more so. We all know authors who's books got to marketing before being sent back with a note that says, "We don't know what to do with this." "But it's a vladesimus tangential thingamajigie!" the author whines. Sure, and the marketing department only has a slot for vladesimus tangential thingamajigies with pie. Genre matters.

The moral of that paragraph being: When authors start mashing genres together looking for the secrets of cold fusion and hoping to ignite a tiny gleaming star in the eyes of reader everywhere, it has to happen with the awareness that the whole unstable project could detonate instead of meshing into something brilliant and stable. Let's contemplate the mental image of smoking, irradiated messiness for a moment. I have a few of those. They still glow in the darkness under the bed, hauting me in the night. Sad. Thing is. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it works so well that the mash-up of genres becomes a genre unto itself. Paranormal Romance. Scifi Romance. Medical Mystery. (That last included to prove it's not just the romance market that's willing to spawn genres.)

It's a razor's edge to walk, writing something that defies genre - especially if you aspire to sell into a publishing industry that's super invested in slotting stories quickly and easily. If you're self-publishing, the final arbiters of genre are your readers. So classification of your story is between you and them. Just remember, if you write it, you have to tag it so your readers can find it.

If you ask me about crossing genres, I have to tell you to go for it. My first two books were Scifi Romance. Then I had to add a bit of the erotic to that because, you know, mixing two genres wasn't enough. Don't worry about what's selling or not. Read. Write. Have fun. Stay true to your story your way for at least one draft. If you're writing what you'd want to read, genre will likely take care of itself. When your draft is completed, you may find your book already falls handily into a publishing box. But if not, that aspect can be tweaked on rewrite.

Maybe the trick really is writing what you wish you could read. Please do. I know how much I love it when I get to read a book I wish I had written. Also? Vladesimus Tangential Thingamajigie. My new band name. You know. For when I learn to play something that would be acceptable to a band.

Genre Synthesis

If the story type you automatically gravitate towards is provided within the same parameters (formula) over and over and over, you might find comfort in repeatedly having your expectations met but unchallenged. Or you might find your satisfaction is waning as you recognize the predictable beats and dub them stale.

I recently watched some reruns of an old sitcom I loved as a kid. Then, I could watch one after another and be utterly entertained by the wacky plots, but now I found it tedious, boring, and juvenile. (No it was not intended for children.) Growing up, thirty years of life experience and exposure to other more dramatic shows has made me a more savvy and demanding viewer.

Seems logical to assume that readers get similarly savvy and demanding.

As an author, IMHO, you should be challenging yourself with each new story. Your abilities should be growing and you should want to show them off. Readers may dig it; readers may reject it. The Almighty Sales will speak with a voice like thunder and motivate your publisher. You may have to flaunt these shiny new skills within the construct of publisher expectations or give up your notion of receiving funds from their coffers and having their logo on your book spine...but if its a great story, why would they restrict you?

All the 'great' stories I can think of, in books, on the silver and small screens, have one thing in common: diversity.

RECIPE: Take one plot with heart, add: action, characters I can get attached to (invariably taking big risks). Steep these in some element of mystery or the unknown that the character must uncover, and sprinkle with romance. Add heat and brew into a cohesive tale.

So challenge yourself! You do something you haven't done before. Maybe you swan dive into another genre like the ambitious Monday Man-whore Moore. (FYI, that is not a character besmirching statement--he is a fine chivalrous gentleman, but he blogs Mondays, is a man, and we are word-whores.) Maybe you test the waters by invoking some suspense and mild horror into your usual Urban Fantasy. Maybe you slip a little romance and mystery into your Sci-fi.  (Mind the rules KAK provided yesterday.)

Try mingling those genre flavors into a medley that works for both your particular tastes and the demands of your story. The concoction may not be for you, and then again, that mishmash may be the best thing ever.

Mixing Genres & The Tangled Marionette

I'm not certain there are writers out there who don't mix genres. Everybody adds a little sumpinsumpin' from sumpin' else to their work, it's part of what keeps our novels ... novel.

Whatever genre-mash is concocted, I've a Super Big Rule as a writer and Top Demand as a reader:

The novel better deliver on the marketed genre's expectations. 

Your friendly Word Whores have written about those expectations before, so I won't rehash them. Sure, retailers ultimately decide where to display/list the book. However, as an author, I better be able to succinctly answer the most common question put to writers, "What kind of stories do you write?" "Plot Stew" is not an acceptable answer. "I write a little bit of this and a little bit of that," isn't going to help sell your book. You need to be able to say, "I write High Fantasy Mysteries" or "I've published a series of Amish Space Westerns."(hey, the latter could happen, right?)

If you're going to mix genres, do it well and do it for a reason. Tossing assorted genre tropes into your story may give you a lot of rope for creativity, but you're tying your hands to the expectations of readers of those genres.

Be mindful of the marionette. 

It doesn't entertain when it's tangled.

Crossing Genres for Fun and Profit

Each month the RT editors select one book that is not only compelling, but pushes the boundaries of genre fiction. This book stands out from all the others reviewed that month, in the magazine issue and on the website. June 2014's RT Seal of Excellence — the editors' pick for best book of the month — is awarded to Jeffe Kennedy's fantasy romance, The Mark of the Tala.

This week's theme in the Literary Bordello? Cross pollination: mixing and matching your genres.

Boy, am I the girl for you!

For a very long time as a fiction writer, I didn't know that I wrote cross-genre. I started out as a nonfiction writer, more or less, and for years I wrote in whatever style or format struck my fancy. In many ways, the world of "literary writing" is much more tolerant of this. You get to play around and find out what format works best. When an essay didn't work - at the suggestion of several people - I reframed it as a set of poems. Which then won a poetry fellowship. I sold a magical realism short story to a literary magazine that published only creative nonfiction. Which was funny, because the woman in the "essay" has a cancer that turns her into a grizzly bear at the end... VERY creative. :-) In that writing world, format takes second place to art.

In the world of commercial fiction, however, genre is Queen. Book sales are driven much more by type of story than author. Where lit fiction and nonfiction might all occupy the same shelf in the store, my erotic romances and fantasy titles would really never be shelved together - unless some special category like "local author" trumped it.

But this is something I did not get for a very long time.

Admittedly, part of this also comes from me being a very cross-genre reader. I've always read pretty much everything - from Oliver Sacks' essays on neurology to Anne McCaffrey's dragon-fired fantasy to Anne Patchett's books - both her literary fiction and her excellent memoir work - to Nora Roberts' contemporary romances to a book of very smutty rape-porn I found in my grandmother's attic. I never really read by genre. Thus, when I began deliberately writing fiction, I wrote the kind of story I liked to read - not realizing that what I liked to read was a major stew of stuff.

So, I wrote this story about a woman scientist in the modern world who walks out on her annoying boyfriend (contemporary romance), has a strange experience at Devils Tower (magical realism), ends up in Faerie (fantasy), is chained to a bed and forced into a semi-sexual bargain (BDSM/erotic), becomes a sorceress and fights to gain her own agency (sword & sorcery/epic fantasy), and has a convoluted romance (romantic fantasy/fantasy romance). After a few years of hearing that this book (which became Rogue's Pawn) could not be marketed, I finally sold it to a digital-first publisher known for taking chances on cross-genre books (Carina Press).

After that, I thought I got better. I made an effort to write in-genre.

I'm not very good at it.

I think I may be too cross-pollinated. Too eclectic in my tastes and styles to color within the lines. I'm more or less resigned to it.

Plus this happened.

Just last week!

My newest book, The Mark of the Tala, received the June Seal of Excellence from RT Book Reviews. As you can see from the caption above, they give it to a book that "is not only compelling, but pushes the boundaries of genre fiction."

Isn't that the way of the world? One moment a misfit, the next a visionary! (Okay, "visionary" might be stretching things - but still!) In the end, I stuck with what mattered to me. Maybe those early lessons writing non-commercially made a lasting impression. For me, genre has always come in second to story, much as I learned to subsume the format as the art demanded. It takes persistence and more than a little courage, to withstand the marketing types who insist on clear genre boundaries.

Would I do it this way again? Absolutely.