It’s Tuesday and after 10 days abroad I needed a day to myself, to coop from the time change, to not be “on” for a few hours, to just relax and catch up on the publishing world.
Reading through the agent blogs covering the BEA YA Buzz Panel made me giddy with excitement because my works actually fit the hot categories this year. I’ve been pitching my historical fantasy interlaced with magic for the past two years and no one seemed to bite but maybe, just maybe, this is my year. Publishers Weekly says this year is all about combination, multi-layered genres, dystopian futures layered with magic, witchcraft and magic with historical ties, and steampunk with romantic storylines. This has me dancing in my socks because I’ve got 2 witchcraft/historical/mystery manuscripts and one steampunk /adventure in the works. I’ve always heard it’s all about timing and hopefully mine is coming.
Multi genre makes so much sense to me because I don’t think any piece of work is purely one genre. No one writes a mystery without an element of romance, or a fantasy without a tie to historical events; it’s human nature to combine these elements. Jane Austen’s romances would not have been complete without their tie to mystery, Dickens told of misfortune that was tied directly to social demons, and more recently Stephanie Meyer entranced her readers with a fantasy so laden with romance that even I got caught up in it. As an author I think we all live and write in multi-layered, cross genre worlds and I’m so glad to see it becoming a recognized, valued segment of popular fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment