[Latest in the apparently annual June 18 tradition, of (as I said last year) commenting about whatever the heck I want to…]
Ongoing genre confusion: As a rule, readers of fiction tend to latch onto a favorite sort of fiction, to the exclusion of others. They may or may not read “literary” fiction, or that large, unclassifiable body of titles called “mainstream” — but they often return to mysteries, say, or romance, or fantasy, or science fiction, especially for “escape” purposes. They also do not in general read one or more of the other categories.
Which can be a problem, for certain writers anyhow:
Agents, publishers and retailers need to know how to optimize their pitches for a book. Readers who prefer a certain kind of SF, for instance, might be put off by a book cover featuring a man and woman dressed in gauzy lavender; a horror or Western fan, visiting Amazon or the bookstore or library for the umpteenth time, will tend to return to the same genre-based sections, over and over.
So you’ve got to know how to classify your fiction (which comes down to: you’ve got to know your audience, whether they’re book professionals or not).
For the past six or eight months, I’ve been enjoying writing something SF-ish — one long story and one (yet incomplete) novel, as of today. It’s real science fiction: adventures in space, technology, and time. But it also falls squarely into the mystery genre. Furthermore, and maybe worse, it falls into a particular mystery sub-genre. If you know the old Thin Man films, from the 1930s and ’40s, you’ll have the right idea: a charming, sophisticated, and (I hope) funny husband-and-wife team solve crimes which may involve blackmail, murder, and so on… but not crimes of the grisly action-packed thriller sort.
Oh, no: I didn’t even come close to inventing the mystery/SF blended genre, as even a fairly simple Google search will tell you. But modern readers — and the people charged with getting books to them — tend to have edgier tastes. “Nick and Nora Charles in space” does not seem a tagline likely to draw many readers.
…Sigh. It’s hard enough to write without worrying about all this. It’s one of the dilemmas which drive people to self-publishing: I’ll write whatever I want, they say, and I won’t waste time trying to win over professional go-betweens like editors and booksellers. Readers like good books, regardless of genre!
But I don’t really believe genre doesn’t matter, do I? Do I?
A man’s reach vs. his grasp: Last year, I claimed to still be posting occasionally at Medium. A tally of my output there shows that I posted exactly zero times after making that assertion. For what it’s worth, here are the five entries current as of a year ago, and still current as of today:
- Scribbling in Books (Subtitle: “To ‘deface’? Or to ‘annotate’?”): reflections on the practice of writing in the margins of physical books (May 25, 2013)
- The Great Google Books Hack (“Occam’s Jigsaw: because the simplest explanations are sometimes just so damned dull”): in which I tell an amusing story on myself, and my habit of overthinking (and under-reading) (June 1, 2013)
- Lost in Translation? Fiddle De-Dee! (“The (frankly, my dear) damned exquisite disquiets of fame”): a jokey sort of fictional reverie, based on a news item from back then — in which a particular(ly) famous actress had sued a novelist who had dared to use her name in his fiction (June 11, 2013)
- Road Trips, Late 1950s (“How a suburban family of six did them, Dad (oh, Dad) at the wheel”): looking back on family drives in the old station wagon (June 16, 2013)
- Carl Sagan, Geek Hero (“I never knew him. Never even met him. And yet…”): pretty much what it says. What Carl Sagan brought to the original Cosmos TV series, and why he continues (years after his death) to be idolized by engineers, technologists, scientists, and other geeky types. (June 17, 2013)
All of these could have made decent RAMH blog posts.They do seem to have had more readers than most posts here get; I don’t know why I stopped posting there.
Love at first listen: Sometime back in the mid-’90s, The Missus and I were living in our first house, over on the other side of town. As I’d done (and still do) my whole working life, each weeknight I set aside about a half-hour to press off my clothes for the next workday. And (as I still do) I watched TV while doing so. I don’t watch anything lengthy, as a rule: nothing that will compel me to linger, once I shut the iron off — just one or a handful of bite-size chunks to carry me through the task.
(The TED Talks available for TV streaming are good for this, as are “half-hour” sitcom episodes delivered that way — subtract commercial breaks and they’re down to 20 or 25 minutes.)
One of the channels I watched regularly back in those days of more limited choices, only while ironing, was VH1 — one of the two big music-video networks, in the days when they still reliably featured, like, music videos. And on this particular evening, suddenly this ravishing black-and-white four-minute item started playing.
[Lyrics]
I looked up from the ironing board, set the iron back on its heels. On this first listen, I actually left the room for a moment to fetch The Missus. I’d missed the little credits tagline at the beginning, and said to her, my pulse racing, “Who the hell is that???” I think we bought the CD on which it appeared within a couple-three days, which was a pretty speedy response time for us.
I think I’ve calmed down now. And in watching the video again, with 20 years’ hindsight, I confess I’m uncomfortable with some of the imagery (call me a fogey, and then get off my damned lawn). Still, I continue to think that is one, y’know, one powerful video.
Speaking of discomfort: Recently, we spent four days in a Deep South city famous for its hospitality and charm. It wasn’t our first trip — maybe our sixth or so, in seven(ish) years — so I was accustomed to encountering friendly, smiling people on the street.
This year was different, for me. I know it’s weird (goes with the territory), but I found myself intentionally not looking at people’s faces, or concentrating on their foreheads when unavoidable. Why? Well, you’ve possibly heard of the whole #yesallwomen / #notallmen Internet kerfuffle, which reached its peak a few weeks ago (in the wake of the Elliot Rodger horror story). It had drummed into my head how very, very difficult it is for (many, if not most or all) women to feel safe around an unknown man, even/especially one who seems too friendly. I simply didn’t want women to think of me at all a threat. As for men, well, I didn’t want to appear friendly only to them, either.
So I just kept my eyes averted.
Back to normal, now. But it was a tricky time. And I think it means I got the point: probably for the first time in my life, I was pointedly conscious of the fact that a smile can mean something much more fraught than Hi there!
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