The downside to writing outside a clear genre is figuring out enough of a genre match to sell books. For example, my forthcoming novel has:
- An element of historical fiction, kinda. There’s a historical character in the novel but the book is not set at a historical time or involve historical events.
- An element of the supernatural. One of my characters is a Native American legend with supernatural characteristics. However, I’m only dipping a toe into supernatural fiction because this character, while important, is not the gateway to a world of fantasy but an interesting quirk of the world-building needed for this and future stories.
- An element of science fiction, in that the novel features a social science concept prominently but not hard science or the typical space/alien stuff.
So, where does that leave me in the search for my genre? I had a thought this week that while I wasn’t writing hard science fiction, I was writing social science fiction. I Googled it quickly and, lo and behold, Isaac Asimov coined that term many years ago. However, it seems to be a sub-genre of SciFi focused on social issues, not a type of fiction focused on the social sciences. Put another way, it is social science fiction instead of the social science fiction I was hoping.
This Wikipedia post sounds like it was heading toward the definition I sought, but then deviated sharply toward a sub-genre of traditional SciFi.
I kept searching. My next step was at psychological fiction/realism. The Wikipedia article on it was promising but it didn’t seem to exist in the real world as a sub-genre. Or so I thought.
Buried in the Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction sub-category on Amazon is a sub-sub-category called Psychological. There’s some Stephen King and Lord of the Flies in there plus a large quantity of what appears to be psychological thrillers. While I will definitely place my novel in this category, it looks chock-full of established authors published by traditional sources with whom I expect to struggle to compete. Gotta keep looking.
Progress Toward Publishing
Plenty o’ work was done this week. I hit the 17,000 word mark on the novella DEMERGENCE and expect to cross 20,000 words (my minimum) this weekend. The story already reached the minimum viable product (MVP) level, so I’m now tweaking the draft, cutting words that don’t fit and adding words that do. If I’m being completely honest, I like this part of the writing process. Editing is creative, too.
Additionally, I contracted with a cover designer for the novel. I expect to dedicate a post to that process because it has its share of challenges, forcing you to step outside of your author persona and be a business-person.
Well, per usual, have a great week – all 4 of you!