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.

The Biology of Genres

by Allison Pang

When I was (much) younger, it seemed to me that genres were a lot broader than they are now. You had your basic fantasy (the sword  & sorcery stuff), the sci-fi, the mysteries, the horror, the romance, the western...and that was more or less it. (Not counting contemporary, I suppose.) And I tended to linger in the sci-fi/fantasy reading material myself, for the most part - except for occasionally pilfering my mother's romances (the old-school bodice ripper, "his knee forced her thighs apart" sort of dubcon that was fairly prevalent at the time).

If you take a look at evolutionary niches in general, it can be pretty easy to see how species change over time to fit into a certain environment. Whether a species lives or dies can often be determined by their adaptability, especially during an abrupt change in habitat. (Your favorite plant died out? Too bad - better eat this other one and like it or you're gone too...)

Books are very much like that - except the reader audience and publisher expectation make up the

environment. As a literary species, books and the authors who write them have to change or risk being forgotten. (Just look at the poor western genre - so robust in the 70's and 80's...but now it's mostly tumbleweeds. Heck, even the straight pulp horror books I remember seeing on the shelves in the 80's are nearly extinct. I seem to recall there was a huge run on "killer animals" at one point - probably inspired by Jaws, but you name it, there was a book about crazy animals and how they killed people. Cujo and Swarm are the ones I remember most, but there are some great cover gems here. )

Anyway, I'm going off topic, but again, we don't really see a lot of those sorts of books anymore. (And probably for good reason?)

But you know what we do see a lot of? Vampires.

Vampires started out as creatures of horror - but over time, they've become seductive, sparkling beacons of misunderstood angst. In a sense, they evolved and a new genre niche was created - Urban Fantasy. (You could actually split UF into several sub-species as it were - particularly if you think old school UF like Emma Bull, vs the UF spawned by Buffy, who essentially became the progenitor of the mainstream smexy vampire that birthed a thousand undead babies.)

Vampires have slowed down now, but the niche certainly expanded to allow other supernatural beings in - werewolves, demons, angels, fae - pretty much anything can show up in a UF. Although there's always that fine line to straddle between writing something the reader wants/expects and being original. Publishers say they want original, but it often feels as though they just want more of whatever is selling, which is why writing trends tend to come and go in waves. Much like the hawks and doves concept - when a market is saturated by one thing, consumer interest often wanes, creating a gap for the next "big thing" and then there's a new wave of a certain idea - and success is very often being in the right place at the right time, or having a trunk book that fits the bill just as the wave is cresting.

At any rate, I'd say we're seeing far more diversity in book genres overall - a cross-pollination, if you will. (e.g. UF x Romance = Paranormal Romance or Romance x Mystery = Romantic Suspense)

This is a good thing - diversification allows authors to reach more readers. Readers who are only familiar with romance might become more interested in UF after reading a PNR, for example. (And anything that increases audience potential is great.)

Where it potentially becomes problematic is when a book straddles too many genres. (Like those pesky monotremes. Mammals who lay eggs. What the hell is that? By the same token, your steampunk-zombie-dystopian-ya fantasy might be a tad confusing to describe.)

But from a publisher perspective, if a book doesn't fit into a box they can easily sell, then there's a chance the book will be rejected. Doesn't mean it's not a good book - many such books have gone ahead to self-publish and done great, which...again - change in environment. Self-publishing allows for additional change and growth that wouldn't be able to happen otherwise.

The  best advice I can give, though, is not to genre-hop simply to chase a trend. (Unless you can pump books out obscenely quickly.) By the time the book hits the shelves, there's a good chance that genre may no longer be "hot".  In the end, write the book you WANT to read, whatever the genre - it's passion for the story that sells books, not necessarily the label on it.

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.

Where and When Does Genre Matter

In the age of the dinosaurs, when I was in college getting that eminently useful BFA in acting, we were given an assignment to write some scenes for class. The professor PILED on rules and restrictions and expectations until most of the class started squealing.  A demented grin split his grizzled white beard. "It's easier to create inside the stricture of a box than without any constraints at all," he said.

That, to me, is the definition of genre - it's a construct meant to make it easier to create, and subsequently to sell that creation. Fine. That doesn't mean that genre isn't without limitations. By definition. *Glancing at the time travel/steam punk thing staring at me from this hard drive.*

This week, you've seen arguments both for and against genre. I'm not going to pile on. I'm simply going to note that genre only matters based on where and to whom you prefer to sell a story.

Traditional publishing houses have a tendency to stick pretty tightly to genre definitions. That's a distinct marketing choice these houses have made. If you can get all the Word Whores into the same room at the same time, ask us how many of us have had rejections with some variation on the 'we don't know how to sell this' theme. That's the typical response from the big NYC publishers to stories that aren't CLEARLY one genre over another. That being said, gross generalizations always have exceptions to prove the rule and unless someone had been willing to take a chance on a story they couldn't easily classify either as fantasy or as romance, there'd be no paranormal romance. So if you dream of selling to one of the Big Six (or however many there actually are now), your best bet is to stick to genre.

However.

If your heart shrivels at the first hint of a rule about what elements belong in a story, you'll be happier subbing to small presses, e-first, e-only and indie presses. They seem less wed to strict genre categories. Your dystopian paranormal Inspirational (I dare you KAK! :D I'd totally read that if you wrote it.) would find a much warmer reception here. Go to any writerly conference and you'll hear editors from the NYC publishers say, "the small presses can take more and bigger risks." It seems to mean that crossover stories, or novels with many elements, aren't the hard sell in smaller presses than in larger, more codified ones. Happily, what we also seem to be discovering is that readers are less wed to genre definitions than the marketing teams at the Big Six have believed. Absolutely, readers want to be able to sort on things like 'romance' or 'fantasy', but clearly, few of them are going to freak out if there's a little of each in a single story.

I suspect that genre matters a whole bunch early in a writing career - you know - from the standpoint of "You have to understand the rules before you start breaking them." But once you've mastered the finer points of your chosen genre, why shouldn't you branch out a bit if that's what makes your heart sing?

For my part, I like genre because it's what I like reading. I seem to have a voice that shines in one genre above the others I've tried. Sure I write in other genres. In part because my current contract says I have to...but also because of what Linda said - keep stretching. You'll never know what you can do until you run right up against what you can't. But that doesn't mean I don't want a nice, safe writing home to go to from time to time.

So long as it's not a box I've stuck myself into to stagnate.

Genre Monogamy

Part-time Whore Jane Kindred is here for one final week before Allison returns. 

And this week, I’m going to be the killjoy. I believe in genres. Which is not to say that I think they can’t be crossed, mixed, mashed, twisted, and turned on their heads—but I still respect them as classifications with innate value. Among other things, they’re for readers to know what they’re getting. Most romance readers don’t want to read 1,000-page sword and sorcery fantasies. And the reverse is also usually true. As a reader, you learn to trust a certain voice, to look for more by an author whose voice you’ve come to love, and if that voice suddenly changes, it can feel like a betrayal.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think blending genres or writing in related genres or subgenres is great. Where I have issues is when writers try to write all over the map. I’m sure there are some who can do it well, but I see a lot of unestablished writers who don’t seem to be developing a strong voice in one genre or another. Sometimes it looks like throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick. It also feels a lot like writing only for the money. It’s one thing to write for money, hence this blog’s name, but writing only for money just leaves me cold. Writing is something I will always do for love first, with the hope that one day, the money will come along as a bonus.

Years ago, when I was taking photography in college, I remember one particular assignment midway through the semester where I was shocked to find I’d gotten a D. I’d started the semester with As and Bs, but my grades with each assignment had been dropping just a bit lower, until this one kicked me in the gut. I thought I was doing something interesting, making sure all of my photos were different, exploring different techniques, being adventurous. My instructor asked me what was interesting about my photos and I had to admit as I stared at them on the table in front of him, I didn’t have an answer. I think I said something like, “well, they’re diverse.” He replied that I needed to learn how to do one thing well before I tried doing everything. He also explained that it was the hallmark of a mature artist to develop a recognizable style. At 20, that concept hadn’t even occurred to me until he said it to me that day and I began to look around at all the artists I loved and realize why I loved them.

That lesson stuck, for good or ill. I’m still trying to get good at what I do. For the most part, I write epic fantasy with a somewhat urban/paranormal flavor. While I’ve also written erotica, I prefer when the fantasy and the erotica are in the same package. That’s what works for me as a writer. When I write erotica without fantasy, I can do it technically well, but my heart isn’t in it. I’ve also tried writing romance (with and without erotic elements) without the fantasy or paranormal, and it just falls flat. Maybe it’s just that I’m not as multi-talented as other writers, but I feel strongly that I need to love what I write. If other writers who hop genres truly love what they’re writing, then maybe it works. But for me, I find it difficult to divide my love and attention. Maybe I’m actually a monogamist after all.

Being a Multi-Genre Writer

The conference is over and I'm heading home this morning!

Last night my wonderful Kensington editor, Peter Senftleben, took us out to dinner at the Chart House at the Golden Nugget. Agent Pam and David came along, too. It was excellent and very fun.

This week's topic of conversation in the bordello is Jumping Genres. It's a funny one for me, since I'm the one in this group who probably writes in the most genres. If we had Spice-Girl style nicknames, I would be Multi-Genre Ho.

Which doesn't have much of a ring to it, huh?

(Back when I was still pitching my first novels and trying to get a fiction-publishing deal, an agent told me my books fell in the cracks between genres. My ever-loving and supportive friends started calling me the Crack Ho.)

At any rate I have written and published in:

Creative Nonfiction
Poetry
Literary Fiction
Magical Realism
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Sword & Sorcery
Fantasy Romance
Contemporary Romance
Erotic Romance
Erotic Fantasy

I'm also noodling a great idea for a kind of suspense/thriller something or other.

I kind of haven't met a genre I didn't like - they all have their seductive qualities. Really, I'll go home with any of them, as long as they treat me right.

It's not like I did this on purpose, however. In many ways, I think my "problem" is that I don't think in terms of genre. They're all just stories to me. This is possibly because there's not many books I don't enjoy - I read widely and eclectically. In my head, this becomes the kind of "soup" that Veronica and James mentioned in their posts last week.

Now, the standard advice to new writers is to concentrate on one genre, build your author brand there, and only branch out later. If ever. There are many cautionary tales of writers who stepped out of their branded genre to do something else and got slapped by readers. (Remember when Stephen King first wrote a Literary Fiction novel?)

I could never follow this advice.

And I used to feel kind of bad about it. I think that, in some ways, publishing in several genres did slow my trajectory. I don't have a author brand clearly associated with one genre.

However, looking back on my life, I see that this is very much who I am. I am Eclectic Girl. In college, I double-majored in Comparative Religious Studies and Biology - with enough credits for a theater minor. I'm not sure there's a genre I've never read. When I take those Type A vs Type B or Right Brain vs. Left Brain tests, I always get an even score of both.

This is who I am, apparently.

And now people are telling me that my brand is clear. That my stories all do have common elements, regardless of where they're shelved. Sure, I have some readers who only read my fantasy stuff and some who only read the contemporary stuff - but that's actually very cool. Something for everyone!

The topic title is an interesting choice, because it recalls the concept of "jumping genes." Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for identifying this phenomenon, where genetic elements actually move from one sequence to another, essentially mixing things up. As far as fitness and natural selection are concerned, maximum heterogeneity (a variety of genes) is FAR more beneficial than homogeneity (genes that match). Basically it means that an individual with a lot of ability to adapt - for example, be able to change food sources - is more likely to survive than and individual with a very tight niche (think panda bears that can ONLY eat certain leaves).

After all, if you only write in one genre, what happens when that genre is no longer hot? You risk extinction as an author.

In the end, I really believe that genre is a marketing construction. It shouldn't be a straightjacket.

It's all about the story.

Why I Write Genre

As a quick and dirty side note to this post, I took the family to see The Avengers last night. It was nicely epic - and rather apropos given today's topic.

(Genre being what it is, I *do* so love me a good comic book movie.)

I'm not sure bringing the five year old to it was the wisest decision - she doesn't always get that questions carry in movie theatres. But that little voice sighing "Thor" the moment the Asgardian hit the screen? Made it all worthwhile.

(Yes, Lucy LOVES Thor and all his blondie-bear bicep goodness. She even sleeps with a foam replica of Mjölnir in her bed sometimes. I foresee a long and happy geek girl life ahead of her.)

*ahem*

Anyway, so I suppose I should talk about why I write genre. Or maybe the question should really be why I *don't* write literary fiction?

To be honest, I'm not sure I ever really differentiated between the two. Growing up, books came in two categories: 1) Books I liked to read 2) Books I didn't.

I've already mentioned in previous posts that I was fairly hard core into the sci-fi and fantasy books at an early age. It concerned my mother enough that she bought me the entire set of Mark Twain classics. (It was a set.) I was supposed to read them to keep my brain from rotting, I guess. And I did.

I slogged through almost every volume...and hated every minute of it. If I'd been raised to read nothing but those types of stories, I doubt I'd be a writer at all today.

In fact, I suspect the reason so many people hate reading is because they're reading the wrong books. My son had a hard time getting into reading...until he discovered that some of the movies that he likes had entire book series. He's only 8, but well into the Percy Jackson books now - and more importantly he's reading on his own. I'll catch him in bed at 11 PM sometimes, with a light on under the covers. He just needed something to set his imagination on fire. Though he did ask for a copy of Lord of the Flies too - so we'll see how that goes.)

Which is good. When it comes to literary fiction, I can't deny that it has its place. But I'll also admit I find most of it terribly dry or boring or just plain weird. Reading is my escape - the last place I want to try to escape to is one that disinterests me. I sure as hell wouldn't write in it. (I've tried...and it was a disaster.)

And it's not that I don't understand it. I took a course in high school that taught us to dissect literary books and stories down to their base archetypes. I  found that part rather fascinating and I was pretty good at it. (Impressed several of my college level professors, anyway.) But for me, that was *work* - certainly not something I did for fun.

A quick and  somewhat embarrassing anecdote - I've mentioned before that I did take a Creative Writing class in college. Within 15 minutes of the first class I became deeply disappointed when I realized I wasn't going to be allowed to write the things that I wanted to write. And I quit writing immediately after the class because I thought that writing the boring stuff was going to be my only choice.

What I didn't mention was HOW I realized within that first 15 minutes that this class wasn't for me. We were supposed to go around the table and introduce ourselves and mention who are favorite writer/story was. And I was all excited, thinking that I'd be able to share the stuff that made my heart sing.

But as we moved around the table and the writer names came out? Faulkner, Hemingway, Conrad, O'Connor, and so on. Names of authors and stories that I had long ago compartmentalized to "required reading" and "only if I had to." A little voice in the back of my mind went Are you effing kidding me?


I may have said that last one out loud.

Yeah. Okay, moving along then. Blah, blah, blah.

I've never understood why genre fiction gets the bad rap that it does. A literary book may be considered a higher form of the art by some, but if no one's reading it, is there a point? Yes, there is a fine line between cliche and tropes, but all those same archetypes I studied in the literary books? The colors, the Jungian mythology? It's all there in genre fiction too - but in a form that you don't have to be an English major to understand.

And sometimes? It includes pervy little unicorns.

Why Choose Genre?

by Jeffe Kennedy

On the Word Whores blog, we are all writers of genre. We were semi-random about choosing the original group of seven and continued that fine tradition with replacing those that moved on. But, we all write some form of speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, that kind of thing.

You could say we chose to write it.

But - and I'll be interested to hear what my fellow Whores say - but I didn't choose anything.

It chose me. And by that I mean, it rose up, seized me by the throat and refused to let go.

Speculative fiction, in all its glorious permutations, is what has always lit me up. From fairy tales to mythology to the day I picked up my first Anne McCaffrey book and discovered the joy of stories on other freaking planets, these have been the kind of stories I love to read.

Turns out they're also the stories I love to write. I don't choose what turns me on.

I mean, we're all self-confessed Word Whores here. We tell you right there on the side bar that we all started doing it out of love. That's a little whore-secret: we still do it out of love. Out of obsession. Because we can't freaking help ourselves.

If we make some money at it, that keeps us alive a little longer so we can keep doing it.

The picture above is one that the editors at Aeon Thirteen put on my very first speculative fiction story, Pearl. Which you can still buy here, should you be so inclined. It's a good story. I've gotten better since then.

But I still remember the feeling of writing it. Of letting myself write it, this non-literary, lower story life form.

Oh yeah. It was that good.

Sign me up for more.