You’ve probably noticed that in my bio I refer to myself as a speculative fiction writer. To most outside of the industry, this might be an obscure term, but it covers a large variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
If you check Wikipedia, which I just did, they have a pretty long list of genres included under the umbrella term speculative fiction. Besides fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, they include dystopian fiction, utopian fiction, superhero fiction, alternative histories, supernatural fiction, apocalyptic fiction, and post-apocalyptic fiction. I’d like to add magical realism to that list too. That’s a whole lot of things covered by just one term. That’s why like it. It’s kind of a way of choosing a genre, but not really choosing a genre.
In the world of indie writing you’re often told to pick a genre. People use terms like “write to market” and “know your genre” and “write the tropes” all the time. (All right they don’t say “write the tropes” but tropes are often referred to. I just couldn’t think of a phrase that used the word.) For some writers choosing a genre is easier than for others. It seems to me that a lot of authors can easily categorize themselves as romance, science fiction, fantasy, or horror writers. My early books are magical realism. The Box, Perfect Family, and Flying Lessons don’t really follow many genre conventions. That makes them tougher to categorize. When you have to advertise your books having a category that they clearly fall into is important.
I struggle with this. I even tried to write romance because it was a clear category, and I was advised to try the genre out. Following other people’s advice on this matter wasn’t really the best idea. First of all, I don’t read romance, so why would I write it? I went ahead and wrote the book, but I couldn’t help sprinkle some magic in it. Any of you who’ve read The Barista know that there is magic in that book. There isn’t as much magic as you would normally find my books but there is a magic. My original intention was to make The Starlight Café series all clean romance books. By the time I got to the second book, things were that cut and dry. I was being pulled in the direction of writing a ghost story. So I decide to follow my muse do that. Which meant The Psychic went a little off the rails when it comes to following genre conventions. I love that book though.
Currently, I’m writing the third book in the series and again it’s not really a cut and dry romance. There are ghost and time travel and a whole bunch business that doesn’t have any business being in a normal romance book.
I haven’t even mentioned my attempt at writing an urban fantasy serial that turned into a family drama set in an alternate reality. It’s called Isle of Gods if you want to check it out.
Frankly, I’ve bungled a lot of stuff in the guise of giving readers what they want, when in reality I only ended up writing exactly what I felt called to write again and again. I feel called to write about something quite specific. My books all have similar themes, relationships, regret, change, reaching for something higher than self, and they all have magic. Maybe I’ll never be successful writing like that. That all depends on how you define success. My definition is slowly changing.
That’s why I decide to call myself a speculative fiction writer. I know that no matter what I’m writing there’s going to be something that is magical in the book. That’s what I’m drawn to. I could deny it and try to write books that are grounded in reality but then I would not be writing books that are true to who I am.
I was listening to the Story Grid podcast with Shawn Coyne last week. On the podcast, he quoted Melissa Gilbert as saying that she learned that she needed to stop expecting to her writing to support her, she needed to support her writing. When I heard that quote something inside me clicked. All this time I’ve been struggling with how to change what I write to earn more money. Frankly the struggle has made me unhappy and sucked the joy out of my creativity. I am through with that. No more struggle over what genre to put myself in and how to write a best seller. I only want to write the best book I can. Hopefully things will come together in the end.